LAS VEGAS (AP) — On a chilly morning in 2019, just after 3 a.m., Roy Anthony Scott called 911 to report that a group of people — one armed with a saw — was trying to break into his apartment.
This wasn’t the first time a dispatcher had sent emergency responders to Scott’s home in Sunset Gardens, a senior living complex in Las Vegas. Seven other 911 calls had been placed from his apartment over the previous year, logs from Las Vegas Fire & Rescue show, including one just hours before he called about an attempted break-in.
An incident report from that second-to-last call said Scott complained of chest pain and had a history of psychiatric issues, stroke and diabetes. The case was closed in just 18 minutes, records show.
A neighbor and a relative said ambulance crews typically responded to Scott’s calls because of his known health conditions. But in the pre-dawn hours of March 3, 2019, it was two Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers answering the call: Kyle Smith and Theodore Huntsman, who were working their first shift together.
The officers knocked on Scott’s second-floor apartment door and asked him to come out, but Scott insisted the intruders were now inside his apartment and asked police to kick in his door, body-camera footage shows.
Instead, the officers shined a flashlight through Scott’s apartment window. They later testified they saw a man standing alone, looking off with a “thousand yard stare.”
When Scott eventually left his apartment, police said he came out holding a long, thin metal pipe and a cellphone. Smith drew and pointed his gun at the 65-year-old Scott saying, “put that down.” Scott immediately dropped the pipe and slowly descended the complex’s stairs.
Scott also gave officers a steak knife from his waistband. But when police asked him to turn around for a pat-down, Scott refused and said he wasn’t comfortable because he had paranoid schizophrenia.
As the officers became insistent, Scott became more agitated. Body-camera video showed the officers trying to handcuff Scott and the three men falling to the ground.
Officers then turned Scott facedown onto his stomach and pressed the weight of their bodies and gear against him for over 90 seconds while struggling to put on the handcuffs before rolling him onto his back and side, according to police body-camera video. Throughout Scott repeatedly begged the officers to please stop.
Police left Scott lying on his side on a patch of sidewalk and gravel in front of the complex for nearly 10 minutes before paramedics arrived and told police to uncuff him. Once in the ambulance, paramedics started CPR on Scott, but it was too late. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The medical examiner’s report said Scott’s death was an accident caused by methamphetamine intoxication and not police restraint.
“My dad, he needed help. He didn’t need to be apprehended, handcuffed,” said his daughter, Rochelle Scott, 46. “He didn’t deserve to go out — no one deserves to go out like that — like a dog in the street.”
“They made him look like a monster, like he was just this dopehead and nobody cared and loved him,” she added. “That was not the case.”
For Rochelle Scott, the police response to her father — her last living parent — changed her life forever. She had been planning to get married, but in an interview, Scott said, “I never got married. My dad was supposed to walk me down the aisle.”
Scott filed a wrongful death lawsuit in October 2020 against the officers and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on her father’s behalf.
A judge in March 2023 found that the force officers used against Scott was unconstitutional, especially given that he had not committed a crime or threatened harm to the officers or himself. Attorneys for the officers did not respond to a request for comment but have appealed the judge’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is pending.
Contested term obscures risks
Police said they noticed Scott was faintly breathing while lying on his side. One of the officers radioed dispatch, saying Scott was potentially suffering from “excited delirium,” according to an investigative report by police.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department does not have training specifically for meth-induced crises. But it does have a policy on “Responding to Persons in Behavioral Crisis or with Special Needs” that identifies excited delirium as an “acute, excited state” that is “usually associated with illicit or prescription drug use and manifested by behavioral and physical changes that may result in sudden and unexplained death.” It says those experiencing excited delirium “should be considered in medical crisis.”
But some criminology and medical researchers question the reality of excited delirium and how the police approach subjects in crisis.
Since 2014, all new recruits in the Las Vegas police department must take 36 hours of Crisis Intervention Team training to learn how to manage situations involving mentally ill people, as well as those believed to be suffering from excited delirium. Officers are advised to call for medical help, quickly turn subjects onto their side after subduing them so that airways aren’t constricted, and monitor their breathing.
The officers who responded to Roy Anthony Scott’s call for help had been trained in crisis intervention the year before, court records show. But Peter Goldstein, an attorney who represents Scott’s daughter, said training programs don’t always mean officers are properly trained. “They didn’t appear to learn the training because they didn’t recognize things that were readily apparent,” he told the Howard Center.
While it was the first time the two officers had worked together, Smith testified it was not his first encounter with Scott. According to 911 dispatch records, he helped a fellow officer in January 2019 detain Scott, after someone reported “a suspicious person that was acting in an agitated manner” outside a supermarket. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told the Howard Center there were “no responsive records” related to the incident.
Little is known about the officers’ background or job performance; police personnel records are not public under Nevada law. The police department denied a public records request for any use-of-force incident reports involving the officers.
According to their depositions in the civil case, Huntsman was hired by Las Vegas police in August 2017 and had previously been a construction worker and ophthalmology technician. Smith joined the force in September 2017 and had previously worked in retail at stores that sold hunting and outdoor goods and guns.
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Reporters Rachel Konieczny and Taylor Stevens contributed to this story, which was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Howard Center is an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. Contact us at [email protected] or on X (formerly Twitter) @HowardCenterASU.
