The fatal shooting by New Brunswick police of an elderly woman in a mental health crisis has left advocates, residents and family members outraged over why no mental health support was present at the time of the incident.
“Simply, the police needed to recognize when they were out of their element,” Tormel Pittman, the nephew of Deborah Terrell and the family’s advocate, said in a recent interview with NJ Spotlight News.
“It was beyond their control, but they still proceeded with police tactics. And that’s why my aunt is actually not here today. They didn’t know when they needed to call in for extra help or professional help.”
Similar fatal shootings by police of people in crisis prompted calls for more robust emergency responses, including programs such as Arrive Together, now available statewide, that pairs mental health professionals with police responding to such crisis calls.
These programs were launched after several separate incidents where police shot and killed people in crisis, often after family members called for help.
Lead-up to the shooting
On Aug. 8, Terrell, a 68-year-old resident of the John P. Fricano Towers, was shot and killed by a New Brunswick police officer while officers were responding to her apartment.
At around 7:38 a.m., officers can be seen on body-camera video arriving at the apartment building after another 911 call reporting that Terrell was “repeatedly going in and out of her apartment and threatening other tenants with a knife,” according to the attorney general’s office.
This was the second time that morning that police officers had responded to the apartment for a 911 call about Terrell. In response to this second 911 call, a dispatch service contacted emergency medical services and requested that EMTs be outside the building for a potential evaluation of Terrell.
The shooting of Deborah Terrell is the latest in a number of killings by New Jersey police officers in recent years of people in mental health crises.
At 7:41 a.m., five New Brunswick police officers can be seen outside Terrell’s apartment, where one knocks on the door. Terrell opens the door with a knife in her hand. Officers tell Terrell to drop the knife. Terrell shuts the door and moves the knife back and forth underneath the bottom of the door. Officers ask her to open the door again and talk to them.
Police officers continue to knock on Terrell’s door and try to speak with her. Eventually, officers gather at one side of the apartment door and discuss who would use “lethal” and “less lethal” force. Shortly after that, Terrell opens the door with a knife in her hand. She steps out of her apartment and one officer uses pepper spray while another officer uses a Taser. The officer who used pepper spray then fires his gun twice, hitting Terrell. Officers tell Terrell to “stay down” after she is shot.
Terrell was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, according to the attorney general’s office, where she died.
The entire incident is shown in graphic detail on police body-camera footage and in audio recordings of 911 calls released by the attorney general’s office last week.
No answers
According to the state attorney general’s website, the New Brunswick Police Department is a participating agency in the state’s Arrive Together program. The pilot program pairs mental health clinicians with police officers when responding to people experiencing a mental health crisis. Arrive Together began in late 2021 and the state budget includes just over $20 million for the pilot program in the current fiscal year. The program is operational in all 21 counties and appears to be reducing the use of force by police during mental health emergency calls, according to a 2023 study.
Rutgers Health University Behavioral Health Care is listed on the state attorney general’s website as the mental health provider that partners with police departments for the Arrive Together program in Middlesex County.
When asked by NJ Spotlight News if anyone from Rutgers UBHC Middlesex was called to respond to the 911 calls for Deborah Terrell on Aug. 8, Michael Symons, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said that “because this encounter remains under investigation, we are not releasing additional information at this time.”
Long-time residents of New Brunswick who watched the police body-camera footage, including Beverly A. Marshall, say that police officers were intimidating Terrell by constantly knocking on her door and asking if a man she said was in her apartment could come out so the officers could speak with him.
“As professional trained police officers of the law, they should have immediately called the dispatcher and requested a mental health counselor,” said Marshall, who has lived in New Brunswick since 1995. “Instead, they made the situation worse by calling her name and knocking on the door constantly.”
Other fatal police encounters
The shooting of Terrell is the latest in a number of killings by New Jersey police officers in recent years of people in mental health crises.
In July, a state grand jury did not return criminal charges against a Fort Lee police officer who shot and killed Victoria G. Lee while she was experiencing a mental health crisis in July 2024.
In April, a state grand jury voted not to file criminal charges against a Jersey City police officer who shot and killed Andrew Washington while he was experiencing a mental health crisis in August 2023.
The lack of grand jury indictments has raised concerns among advocates calling for police accountability.
And in March, a state grand jury declined to criminally charge the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Najee Seabrooks of Paterson while he was experiencing a mental health crisis in March 2023.
A 2019 state law requires the state attorney general’s office to investigate deaths that happen during an encounter with a police officer or while a person is in custody. The law also requires these investigations to be presented to a grand jury to determine if the evidence supports an indictment against the officers involved.
Questions about police accountability
A recent NJ Spotlight News analysis of hundreds of press releases since the law took effect found that the officers involved in more than 100 incidents in which a person died or was shot and seriously wounded by police are rarely indicted by a grand jury. Just three cases resulted in indictments since Jan. 30, 2019, and one of those was later thrown out by a judge.
The lack of grand jury indictments has raised concerns among advocates calling for police accountability, including Matt Dragon of New Jersey Communities for Accountable Policing.
“I don’t understand how a prosecutor could go with any of these body-cam videos and tell a story to a grand jury that somehow does not end up with them having any sort of qualms about what happened to these people at the hands of police,” Dragon, a member of the statewide coalition, said in a recent interview with NJ Spotlight News.
The Seabrooks-Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act increased state funding to nonprofits that provide de-escalation and follow-up support in nonviolent behavioral health and substance use emergencies, but advocates are dissatisfied with the implementation of the legislation.
“We got Seabrooks-Washington signed into law almost two years ago. Not a dime has been made available to any of the grantees to put those programs in place,” said Zayid Muhammad, lead organizer for New Jersey Communities for Accountable Policing.
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