By Jennifer Ortiz
Staff Writer
The death of a Belmar man who was attending a music festival in Howell on Sept. 5, 2015, has been ruled an accident and no charges will be filed against the police officers who responded to the scene of the incident.
Monmouth County Acting Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni announced on March 17 that a Monmouth County grand jury determined the police officers who responded handled the situation in an appropriate manner, according to a press release.
While the investigation into the actions of the police officers has been closed, relatives of Tim Harden, 38, will continue to pursue a civil lawsuit they filed two months after his death.
According to the prosecutor, Howell police officers responded to a 911 call at 2:52 p.m. reporting a disorderly person at the Souper Groove Music Festival that was being held at the grounds of the Priedaine Latvian Society on Route 33 in Howell. Upon their arrival on scene, the officers were directed to a parking lot where private security guards were holding down a man. The man was later identified as Harden, who was a volunteer at the event.
Through interviews with festival volunteers and concert-goers, police learned Harden had been acting erratically all day, potentially endangering himself and others, and he was believed to be under the influence of an illegal substance. After being approached by an event security guard who was trying to assist him, Harden punched the male security guard in the face in an unprovoked attack, according to the prosecutor.
The security guard responded by punching Harden and, with the help of other security guards, took Harden to the ground. Event organizers called 911 for assistance and also requested an ambulance. When police officers arrived, Harden was belligerent and combative with the security guards who were attempting to restrain him, Gramiccioni said.
The police officers attempted to speak to Harden in an attempt to calm him down and get him medical attention, but he refused. Officers then restrained Harden while waiting for emergency medical technicians so he could receive medical attention.
Responders from the Howell Township First Aid Squad arrived and observed Harden being combative with the police officers and contacted MONOC paramedics so he could be sedated and transported to a hospital. While waiting for paramedics to administer a sedative, Harden stopped breathing, according to the prosecutor.
Harden was placed in an ambulance and transported to Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune, where he was pronounced dead.
The investigation into Harden’s death was conducted by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office after the state Attorney General’s Office determined there was no conflict of interest. The Middlesex County Medical Examiner’s Office conducted a post-mortem examination and issued an autopsy report. The toxicology test conducted as part of the autopsy revealed Harden had cocaine, alcohol and marijuana in his system at the time of his death, according to Gramiccioni.
The cause of Harden’s death was determined to be as a result of drug-induced excited delirium and was ruled an accident by the medical examiner.
Gramiccioni said that based on the results of the investigation and the autopsy results, it is apparent the actions of the police officers were lawful and did not violate the Use of Force policies of the Attorney General’s Office or Monmouth County. The case was presented to a Monmouth County grand jury on Feb. 26, 2016, to review the officers’ actions. After hearing the evidence, the grand jury determined that no criminal charges should be filed against the officers, according to the press release.
Attorney Thomas Mallon, who represents Harden’s sisters, Theresa Taylor and Melissa Barna, has a different view of the situation and said Harden’s sisters are planning to move forward with a wrongful death lawsuit they filed in November.
The defendants in the action are Howell Township; Howell Chief of Police Andrew A. Kudrick Jr.; members of the Howell Police Department; Priedaine New Jersey Latvian Society; Souper Groove, LLP; event planners/promoters Jeffrey Mahajan, Andrew R. Meyer and Christy Meyer; and Griffin’s Security, LLC, which provided security at the event.
“This was a situation where the police should have been de-escalating, rather than escalating. Tim Harden was choked and beaten. The coroner, Middlesex and Monmouth County Medical Examiner Diane Karluk, admittedly struggled with the issue of whether Tim died from asphyxiation or not. In other words, he was choked,” Mallon said on March 17, the day the prosecutor released his findings.
Mallon said Karluk found acute blunt impact injuries to Harden’s head, contusions and abrasions of his face, arms, wrists, right hand and legs, lips and scalp, a fractured eighth rib, and a fractured thyroid cartilage.
Mallon said Karluk’s diagnosis of excited delirium syndrome is often used in situations where people die in police custody of what medical examiners determine to be unknown reasons.
“Well, here there are a lot of reasons that I think he could have died from. You know, being choked, being hit in the head,” Mallon said. “Excited delirium is a very controversial diagnosis that is virtually always used when people die in police custody after some type of struggle, often drug use is involved. The ‘syndrome’ leaves no anatomic signature, so when medical examiners have no other medical explanation for death, excited delirium is the fallback position. It is a syndrome many argue that is often used to whitewash police brutality.”
Mallon said excited delirium is not recognized by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association or the World Health Organization.
Mallon said he recently meet with representatives of the prosecutor’s office and investigators who worked on the case and was able to review information that had previously been unavailable to him.
In a statement released on March 18, Kudrick said the incident involving Harden, Howell police officers and security staff at the music festival that ended in Harden’s death was the first such incident in the 43-year history of the police department. Kudrick said he responded to the scene after he was notified of the incident by his command personnel.
He said the police department was “walled off” from having any significant involvement in the investigation into the incident, as mandated by the Attorney General’s use of force investigation policy.
“As the use of force instructor for the Howell Police Department and the Monmouth County Police Academy, I knew from the onset the officers’ actions were proper. I stated such in a press release shortly after the incident. The findings from the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, and residents of Monmouth County comprised within a grand jury have supported that as well,” the chief said. “The Howell police extend our condolences to the family of this young man. We can all agree he should not have died. However, good people sometimes make bad decisions. Hopefully, this finding gives the family solace and a bit of closure to this incident.”