Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Choking death inquiry frustrates man's family

Relatives and friends of Anthony Makowski plan a memorial walk in his honor Sunday morning.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published July 9, 2005

LAND O'LAKES - Cathy Makowski wasn't there the night her son died, another man's arms locked tightly around his throat.

In her worst moments, though, it sure feels like it.

"It's horrible to have to relive this," she said. "But every time I speak of it, I relive this, the pictures in my mind.

"I can't sleep at night because of all the pictures, seeing him lying on the ground, struggling to breathe, and people watching and allowing him to die, and I think of the pain and suffering he was going through in those last moments."

Her pictures come from friends and witnesses who described Anthony Makowski's last moments that early May 24 morning.

The 21-year-old stopped breathing outside the U.S. 41 McDonald's, authorities say, after being held in a choke hold during a brawl. He died at 5:42 a.m. at Tampa's University Community Hospital.

Weather permitting Sunday, relatives and friends of Makowski's will hold a 10 a.m. memorial walk in his honor in the Big Lots parking lot off U.S. 41.

No one was arrested at the scene, or since. The Pasco Sheriff's Office turned the investigation over to the State Attorney's Office.

It is now over six weeks since Makowski's death, and the family is frustrated with the pace of the inquiry, and the lack of contact with those heading it.

But Sunday is not a day of protest, the mother said, aimed at the Pasco Sheriff's Office substation on nearby State Road 54, or at the prosecutors.

"I am trying to get justice for my son, and release some of the tension some of his friends are experiencing," she said. "They just want him not to be forgotten.

"I just want people to know that he should not be forgotten, that we want justice for him."

But the family cannot ignore what they've since learned after their son's death.

They want to know why Pasco Sheriff's Deputy Donald Shaw's account of the incident doesn't match that of Makowski's friend Rick Hoadley. He was the friend waiting with Makowski in the McDonald's drive-through lane when an argument with two men in a vehicle in front of them turned violent about 4:30 a.m.

Soon one of the men, Martin Robles-Taylor, had Makowski in a choke hold for two to three minutes, one McDonald's employee told deputies, a report said.

Robles-Taylor let go, Hoadley said, a few seconds before deputies arrived.

According to the report, Shaw said he saw three men standing over Makowski. When the deputy asked what happened, "they said that he drank too much and he was throwing up and they did not want him to choke."

The three men denied there had been a fight with beer bottles, the deputy wrote, despite repeated questions.

But Hoadley said he was quickly separated from the other two men, then put in the back of a sheriff's cruiser. He said he had no idea the other two men claimed Makowski was drunk.

According to the report, when the deputy noticed Makowski had stopped breathing, he was about to get his CPR shield and defibrilator when he saw an ambulance and flagged it down.

Hoadley said it was 41/2 hours before a detective questioned him, and the family wonders if Makowski could have received medical treatment any sooner.

"Nobody ever talked to me until right before they let me out of the car," he said, and he only learned of Makowksi's death from his parents.

The first time he gave his full account, he said, was at the State Attorney's Office three weeks ago.

Pasco sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said someone filed a complaint against the deputies involved but would not identify who. After the criminal investigation is complete, Doll said, there will be an administrative investigation.

"It does involve the response of the deputies," Doll said.

Another concern of the family are the witnesses. One witness, whom they identified as former McDonald's employee Teresa Higgins, worked the drive-through that night and saw what happened. But the family is worried because she recently moved to New York without giving a statement.

"I feel she has a moral obligation to come forward and confirm what she has seen," the mother said.

Assistant State Attorney Phil Van Allen said the witness' move was tied to a new job and said prosecutors will question her.

"We'll go to New York and find her," he said.

Van Allen said his office won't decide whether to file a criminal case until the investigation is complete.

"We're still doing interviews," he said. "Until we've done everything humanly possible, we're not going to call it."

[Last modified July 9, 2005, 01:02:12]