Witness: Man detained by police was ‘hogtied,’ later died

SOUTHAVEN, Miss. (AP) – A Tennessee man who died hours after he was detained by police in Mississippi had been hogtied face-down on a stretcher, according to a witness.

Multiple news outlets report that 30-year-old Memphis chemical engineer Troy Goode died in a hospital Saturday night, two hours after being detained by the Southaven Police Department.

Goode and his wife, Kelli, had attended a Widespread Panic concert in Southaven that night, family attorney Tim Edwards told the Clarion-Ledger newspaper. Goode was intoxicated, Edwards said, and the couple left the event.

Southaven Police Chief Tom Long said an emailed statement that authorities were called to a parking lot after the concert and emergency personnel detained Goode and took him to Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto where he died a few hours later.

“Officers were informed that the individual acting erratically was doing so on an alleged LSD overdose,” Long said.

David McLaughlin, a Memphis attorney, says he witnessed the incident and posted a video of the arrest on YouTube, saying it shows Goode being restrained, face-down on a stretcher with his legs pulled back and bound, the Clarion-Ledger reports. (http://on.thec-l.com/1ebY3ve)

“Paramedics arrived on scene, and I see them put him in a four-point restraint or hogtie, I don’t know how else to describe it,” McLaughlin told the newspaper.

McLaughlin added, “He looked to me like he was struggling or convulsing or both. He appeared to be in distress to me.”

The video, also posted by WREG-TV of Memphis, appears to have been shot from across a parking lot and shows a man, identified by McLaughlin as Goode, on a gurney being loaded into an ambulance.

Goode’s family and friends question why police hogtied Goode in their efforts to subdue him, The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reports. (http://bit.ly/1HGpOXv)

Family attorney Edwards asked, “… if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, why did they hogtie him? It is a known risk of positional asphyxiation to do that.”

Long said in his statement that paramedics took Goode to the hospital for treatment for a possible drug overdose. Long said a toxicology report may take two months. He said an autopsy is being conducted at the crime lab in Jackson.

Asking about the hog-tying incident, Southaven police spokesman Lt. Mark Little told media outlets that “it’s nothing that’s illegal. It’s called restraining.”

“We’re just basically keeping him from kicking and hurting someone,” Little said.