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GOTBAUM KIN SUE PHOENIX

Lawyers for the family of Carol Anne Gotbaum, who died in police custody during an airport layover in Phoenix, filed an $8 million wrongful-death claim against that city yesterday.

Carol, the daughter-in-law of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, was inebriated when she allegedly went berserk at Sky Harbor Airport last Sept. 28 after she missed a connecting flight to Tucson, where she was to have entered an addiction clinic.

Cops handcuffed Gotbaum – who had been traveling alone – to a desk in an unattended cell, where she died of asphyxia.

The family alleges that police “used excessive and unreasonable force on Carol, as if she was a dangerous criminal, rather than as the sick, intoxicated, and vulnerable person she was,” according to the legal papers.

The Phoenix law department, in turn, ripped Gotbaum’s husband, Noah, for letting his wife travel alone, saying, “The only ones who knew that Carol was depressed, suicidal and alcohol-abusive were members of her own family.”