A 53-year-old man who died while in Wolcott police custody on Halloween in 2023 died by suicide rather than use of force when police deployed stun guns, according to a report the Office of the Inspector General released on Friday afternoon.
Robert Scott Brown died at 5:04 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2023, while in police custody and the Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation.
Officers responded to Brown’s home on Tyrell Drive at 3:43 a.m. that morning after getting a report that a man was having a psychiatric issue and had broken a window.
They found writing on the walls with blood and Scott was in a pool of blood on a bedroom floor, suffering from several self-inflicted wounds, according to the report released on Friday.
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As officers tried to take him into custody, Brown slashed at them with a razor and a large saw, the report says.
The report says officers attempted to use stun guns to stop Brown, but one cartridge failed to deploy.
As police continued to try to use a stun gun to stop him, Brown slashed a pillow, grabbed a saw and started swinging it and severed the stun gun wires, according to the report. Police again tried the stun gun and it did not work as intended.
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One of the officers used his final stun gun cartridge to attempt to incapacitate Brown and, despite resistance, they placed Brown in handcuffs and EMS gave him a shot of ketamine to calm him down, according to the report.
Brown was then taken into custody and placed in an ambulance.
He lost all vital signs on the way to Saint Mary’s Hospital, and he was pronounced dead soon after arriving, the report says.
The associate medical examiner determined that Scott’s death was a suicide.
She told police that he died of bleeding from several self-inflicted wounds and she did not see the use of stun guns as a factor in his death.
“The investigation establishes that Robert Scott Brown’s in-custody death was not the
result of police use of force or criminal action. The Office of Inspector General will take no further action in this matter,” Robert Devlin Jr., the inspector general, wrote.
