New records reveal a 30-minute gap between the time officials claim Dontae Melton Jr. was taken to the hospital and the time he actually arrived at Grace Medical Center, roughly a mile from the corner of Franklin Street and Franklintown Road where he approached a police car seeking help during a mental health crisis.
Police transported Melton to the hospital in a car after waiting roughly 50 minutes for medics to arrive. The response was delayed, according to Mayor Brandon Scott, because of a problem with the city’s Computer-Aided Dispatch system.
According to hospital records obtained by the Beat, Melton, who was initially classified as a John Doe, did not arrive at the hospital until 11:00 p.m., half an hour after the police car carrying him left the scene, even though, according to Google Maps, the drive would take a civilian with no emergency lights or sirens only four minutes. According to a spokesperson for LifeBridge Wellness, which runs Grace Medical, “patient records are updated in actual time” and never rounded up or down to the nearest hour.
According to the hospital’s records, during the half hour that has not been accounted for by public officials, Melton “was transported to the firehouse and then directly to the emergency department,” according to the hospital records.
“The time of arrival is more than suspicious,” says Eleshiea Goode, Melton’s mother. “I heard for myself on the dispatch audio the police officer say they were transporting him to Grace Medical, so why the hell would they make a stop allegedly at a firehouse?….What life-saving measures did they perform all that time?”
“What life-saving measures did they perform all that time?”
Eleshiea Goode, Melton’s mother
Additionally, according to the hospital’s report, he was “observed banging his head on the floor of the police car,” complicating the previous reports that Melton was unconscious at 10:15 p.m., 15 minutes before he was put in the police cruiser and transported.
Goode wants to know how, after the case of Freddie Gray, who was fatally injured after being left unrestrained in the back of a police transport van, her son could have hit his head on the police car floor. “Why wasn’t he secured?” she asks.
The Office of the Attorney General did not immediately respond to questions about these discrepancies. The office’s Independent Investigations Division has been in charge of investigating in-custody deaths since October 2021 and “has conducted 79 investigations into police-involved fatal or near-fatal incidents throughout the State.”
IID generally releases footage from body-worn cameras within 20 business days of an incident. It has been more than 30 days since Melton’s death.
“The delay in the release of the footage is due to the technical complexity and volume of officer recordings involved,” the Attorney General’s office wrote in a statement. “The IID needs additional time to share the footage with involved parties before public release.”
The footage has not been shared with Melton’s family.
According to the extremely brief initial report from the IID, “at approximately 9:40 p.m., an adult man, approached a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) officer who was stopped at a traffic light in a marked police cruiser at the intersection of West Franklin Street and North Franklintown Road.”
“I’ve got a gentleman pulling on my doors asking for help,” an officer said on dispatch audio. “But he doesn’t look like he needs help.”
Later, an officer said he “thinks somebody’s chasing him, but nobody’s chasing him.”
“While the officer was speaking to the man, the man walked into the middle of the roadway several times. The officer attempted to restrain the man for the man’s own safety, and when other BPD officers arrived on scene, officers placed the man in handcuffs and leg restraints,” the preliminary IID report continues.
The report does not say whether the officers used violence to perform this restraint. At one point an officer radioed that “he’s very irate right now. They have leg shackles on him and handcuffs already.”
The hospital’s report noted that Melton was “brought in by police after an arrest during which he became unresponsive and was noted frothing at the mouth.”
Ten police officers, who have been named by the IID, were on the scene.
Mike Mancuso, head of the union that represents city cops, has been critical of the Attorney General’s handling of this case, arguing that it was “not a dynamic incident like a police officer involved shooting or similar incident. This incident is all on body worn camera! This is clearly a mental health incident where the police officers pleaded for help from other city agencies, and that help never came,” he wrote in a long statement on social media. “This is not a police officer related event that needed the release of the officers’ names.”
Others, including Melton’s family, have been frustrated by the long delay and the lack of information, which could help clear up what happened to Melton between 10:30, when he was placed in a police vehicle, and 11:00, when he reached the hospital.
“This waiting has been painfully agonizing,” Goode told the Beat. “I ‘jump’ every time the phone rings. I can’t make any plans because I want to be available when they call. My therapist is concerned about the emotional turmoil this is taking on my health. I’m trying to remain strong.”
But the new details provide more questions than answers. “What really happened to my son?” Goode says.