Family, Friends Demand Answers After Haverhill Man Dies In Struggle With Police

WBZ NewsRadio's Chaiel Schaffel reports. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
A crowd of at least seventy people are beside themselves
with rage, hammering on the dark windows of the Haverol
Police Department. They're the friends and family of Francis Gigliotti,
and they say they received no word at all from
police more than two days after he died during an
apparent mental health crisis in their custody. His fiance, Michelle Rooney,
says he called her on the phone minutes before he died,

(00:25):
afraid for his life.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
He said, come get me. I says, where are you?
He goes, I'm at rapid seafood.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
You gotta get here.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
They gotta kill me.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I go, who's gonna kill you? And then it was
all muffled in and they were like, you know, stop
stay right there, stop, get down and if there was
a lot of ruckus and he goes, baby, please hurry.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Video of the scene shows the man being restrained by
more than half a dozen officers as he cries for help.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
This was a murder on videotape, pure and stemple yes exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
In a statement in the Essex County DA says Jigglianti
had been restrained for the safety of the public and
then he'd been acting erradically. His relatives are considering legal action,
and they're demanding at the very least of the officers
involved be fired. Kyle Shaffle w BZ Bosson's news radio