Concertgoer Dies In Police Custody

“Positional asphyxiation is what we believe was most likely the cause of death” Tim Edwards, an attorney for the family of 30-year-old Troy Goode told The Associated Press.

Edwards said Goode and his wife were in a parking lot outside a Widespread Panic concert at BankPlus Amphitheater At Snowden Grove but Goode became “paranoid” and they decided to leave, apparently without entering the concert. They went to another parking lot near a restaurant after Goode had allegedly taken a small amount of LSD.

The attorney added neither he nor friends who had also indulged were experiencing any trouble. His statement conflicts with those earlier given by Southaven Police Chief Tom Long, who said said authorities were called to a parking lot 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, said 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 newspaper of Jackson, Miss., reports. 

“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. Long said in an email that Goode was “acting strange and not cooperative. …Officers attempted to detain the subject who began to resist and run from them again.”

Long said paramedics took Goode to the hospital for treatment of a possible drug overdose. He said an autopsy was conducted at the crime lab in Jackson, and toxicology reports would take about two months. Asked 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. Edwards said Goode was 6-foot-1, 145 pounds and a “rail thin,” intelligent man who worked as an engineer for nexAir, a distributor of atmospheric gases and welding supplies based in Memphis. He said Goode graduated with honors from Christian Brothers University in Memphis.

“This guy was exceptional. He was quite bright,” Edwards said. “He was not a criminal,” Edwards added. “He was a highly compensated individual who made a mistake, and now he’s dead because of it,” Edwards said.