Mentally ill man abandoned on highway by responding officers dies after being run over by passing vehicle in South Carolina
SANTEE, SOUTH CAROLINA: A New Jersey family have filed a lawsuit against four state agencies and individual employees for allegedly not giving proper aid to their son Paul Tarashuk, 26, who was found dead after being “abandoned” at a closed gas station by a sheriff’s deputy in September 2018.
The young man was suffering from delusions and hallucinations as a result of an existing schizoaffective disorder.
Tarachuk Jr. was traveling on a highway in Orangeburg County, South Carolina on September 9, 2018, when he had a psychotic breakdown.
Parked for a roadside break, a trucker came face to face with the victim standing naked in front of him. Although the trucker initially did not give the nude man any second thought, halfway into the interstate, he realized Tarashuk Jr. was riding on his rig and alerted the police.
One of the first responders on the scene was Orangeburg County Sheriff's Deputy Clifford Doroski. His bodycam recorded what happened when EMS arrived. They asked Tarashuk if he spoke English but he didn't answer the first responders as one of the workers appeared frustrated and started berating him.
"I'm being f*****g serious. I'm sleepy. Give me your damn name so I can go home for real. I'm tired," one first responder said.
Next, the paramedics shoved an ammonia capsule up Tarashuk's nose and asked authorities to bring him to a safe location.
The deceased's parents, Cindy and Paul Tarashuk Sr., spoke to CBS News, expressing their anguish at the incident.
"There, I mean at that point, someone should have stepped up and said 'We gotta take him in someplace. He's not just someone to let go,'" said Tarashuk Sr. told CBS News.
OCEMS protocol says "Any patient in the care or custody of police retains the right to refuse transport to the hospital," but in certain situations, if there is "any doubt about the cause of the patient's alteration in mental status, protocol requires EMT to transport the patient to the hospital for evaluation."
But instead of a medical center, Doroski was seen transporting Tarashuk to a closed gas station with no way for him to call for help.
"It's just watching him walk to his death. He was escorted by an officer to his death," Cindy said.
Five hours later, Tarashuk was found dead in the same highway after being run over by a passing vehicle.
The same group pf paramedics were called to the scene to process his dead body.
"If I'd have known that he was just going to drop him off, we'd have just took [Sic] him to the hospital and dropped him there," one of the first responders was heard saying in the bodycam footage.
"They didn't do their job. That's it," Cindy said. "They just didn't do their job. They didn't care enough about human life to do their job."
State Sen. Katrina Shealy has also expressed her anger regarding the incident. "I think there needs to be a better investigation into what happened. I mean we can see it on the video. I think somebody, you know, needs to explain to them why it happened, which they haven't," she said.
Apart from seeking justice, answers and a monetary award, Tarashuk Jr.'s family have also set up a Facebook page to bring attention to their son's case.