Sister: Combination of pills, poor police work killed brother
A photo of Thomas Hamby, who was shot and killed by police outside his Syracuse home.
Linda Bailey holds a picture of her brother Tom Hamby who was shot and killed by police January 8.
SYRACUSE — While police are still tight-lipped about the investigation regarding the officer-involved shooting that killed a Syracuse man, his family says a combination of prescription drugs and poor police work are what killed him.
“He was not a violent man,” Linda Bailey told the Standard-Examiner in an exclusive interview Thursday. Bailey is the sister of 49-year-old Thomas Hamby, who was shot after police responded to a call on Jan. 8 in Syracuse.
Hamby later died of his wounds.
On the night of Jan. 8, police say they received a call from a woman who said her boyfriend had a rifle and was acting strangely. Police responded to the incident as a “domestic dispute.”
When officers from Syracuse Police and the Davis County Sheriff’s Office approached the home, Hamby, according to police, opened his front door and started firing at the officers, who immediately returned fire and shot him multiple times. He was airlifted to a local hospital where he died a few days later.
The Standard-Examiner submitted open records requests for body-cam and dash cam footage of the incident, plus 911 calls, but no information has been released. The requests were denied and are on appeal. The Utah Attorney General’s Office is investigating the incident because one of the Davis sheriff’s deputies involved in the shooting is related to a person who works in the county Attorney’s Office.
Bailey said her brother was not himself that night due to prescription drugs that caused him to hallucinate.
Hamby had shoulder surgery just a few days prior to the incident and was prescribed painkillers. Bailey said he was allergic to typical painkillers like Lortab and Vicodin, so he was given alternative drugs called Lyrica and Nucyenta for the pain.
Bailey said his girlfriend quickly noticed strange behavior from Hamby and that it was obvious that he was hallucinating from the drugs. At one point, he thought the arm sling he wore was a snake and refused to wear it.
Bailey said they called the doctor who prescribed the drug, who told Hamby to immediately stop taking the drugs and use Tylenol instead. However, the side effects of the drugs did not seem to wear off before it was too late, Bailey said.
The morning before the incident, Hamby’s girlfriend called police after he went out into the cold without a shirt and shoes, shouting that someone had stolen his truck, when in fact it was still in the garage, Bailey said. The responding officer tried to calm Hamby and convinced him that he had found his truck.
With the knowledge that police had already been to Hamby’s home just hours before and that he was suffering from obvious hallucinations, Bailey says she doesn’t understand the police’s response when they returned later that night.
When Hamby’s girlfriend got home that night and found him with a rifle in his hands, he told her to leave.
“I don’t even know if he recognized her,” Bailey said. “She left the house and ran down street and called 911. She told police that he was hallucinating and begged them not to hurt him.”
On Thursday during her interview with the Standard-Examiner, Bailey said she thinks that her brother may have thought the officers were intruders and intended to do him harm. Hamby was also hard of hearing and may not have heard police’s commands, she said.
Regardless of how it happened, Bailey said she believes the police mishandled the situation and that her brother paid the price.
“They knew he was not well, they knew he was hallucinating. They were at the house earlier,” she said. “Why would they approach him the way they did?”
Asked Friday for reaction to Bailey’s comments, Syracuse police and the sheriff’s office did not immediately return phone calls. Beyond brief summaries of the shooting released by public information officers the night of the shooting and the next day, officials have consistently declined further comment, citing the pending investigation as the reason. That same reason was given for denial of open records requests.
Bailey believes there were alternative ways of handling what was happening, including being more sensitive to Hamby’s condition and coming up with a plan. Instead they made it seem like the only way it could end was with gunfire, she said.
Bailey said she’s also been frustrated with the way the story has been put out in the media.
“She (Hamby’s girlfriend) was calling for help. It was not some domestic dispute. They weren’t fighting. This wasn’t a suicide by cop,” she said. “Even as officers arrived on the scene, she was still pleading with the dispatcher.”
Bailey said her brother was a good man who enjoyed hunting and boating. He had no criminal history or problems with drugs.
“I do wonder, if it was one of their own police officers in the situation, would they have shot him the same way?” Bailey said.
In response to the shooting, the Davis County Critical Incident Investigation Protocol was activated, which calls in investigators from multiple agencies to conduct the investigation, including Layton Police.
The officers who shot at Hamby, one officer from Syracuse Police and two deputies from the Davis Sheriff’s Office, are on administrative leave.
Contact reporter Andreas Rivera at 801-625-4227 or arivera@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @SE_Andreas.