Police Chief Disciplined In Suicide Case, Subject Of Complaints

REDDING, CT — It is just before 2 a.m., the morning of April 5, 2014, and officers from the Redding Police Department are responding to a call of an overturned car on Umpawaug Road near Wayside Lane. Just off the road, in a leaf and dirt covered area, they find a Mercedes SUV one its roof.

The driver’s door was partially open. The windshield on the driver’s side was shattered. Inside they found 39-year-old Gugsa Abraham Dabela, a local lawyer known to his family and friends simply as “Abe.”

When officers removed Dabela from the vehicle, they discovered he had two head wounds consistent with a bullet entering and exiting his head.

He was pronounced dead at 2:11 a.m..

Fatal crashes in Redding are not very common. While the town is fairly big by Connecticut standards, encompassing about 36 square miles, there are almost never more than two crashes in a year; often, there are none, according to local police records.

About six hours later — before an autopsy had been done, before forensics tests had been run, before Dabela’s family had been notified — a press release was issued by the police department saying that Dabela had been found dead. The release stated that the cause of death was suicide.

It is a case – with its quickly made judgment – that has received renewed scrutiny in light of the department's handling of the suicide of Peter Valenti, who was first mistaken for a dummy and then left unexamined for about 30 minutes; time in which he possibly could have been saved.

While the state police would eventually support the conclusion of suicide in the Dabela case— and it is certainly possible that’s how Dabela died — Dabela’s family is suing the department, accusing police of rushing to judgment rather than throughly investigating the incident. The lawsuit alleges the department mishandled the case from the beginning and that Dabela not only didn't commit suicide, there's still a killer on the loose.

They say Dabela was not depressed and had not demonstrated any suicidal tendencies, and pointed to the fact that over the past few hours, he had been in two restaurants handing out business cards, trying to drum up new business.

They also point to the fact that Dabela’s DNA was not found on the trigger, though the DNA belonging to three other people — none of them responding police officers — was. They allege that while Dabela's hands were never tested for gunshot residue, the cuffs of his jacket were, and those tests came back negative.

NOT THE ONLY CASE

The case of Abe Dabela is now one of several instances in which the actions of the Redding Police Department and its chief, Douglas Fuchs, are being scrutinized.

In late October, Patch was the first to report that in April 2014, a Redding police officer mistook a man found hanging in his shed for a dummy, never checking his vitals. Fuchs is accused of preventing an EMT from examining the victim for more than 10 minutes, according to police records

When the EMT finally was allowed to examine the man, Peter Valenti, he was found to still have heart activity. But it was too late and Valenti was pronounced dead a little while later.

Valenti’s family also is suing the department, stating that if Fuchs and the other officers had not waited about 30 minutes before checking Valenti, he might still be alive.

The EMT who was on scene at the incident — Sean Morris — has also filed a complaint, charging that he was prevented from providing care.

While the town of Redding had known about questions concerning the handling of the Valenti situation for more than one year, it was only six days after the Patch report — and nearly 18 months after the incident —that the city suspended Fuchs without pay.

COMPLAINT OVER CAR CRASH

AT 7:51 on the morning of Dec. 27, 2016, EMT Sebastian Martinez was among those responding to a car crash at Blackrock Turnpike and Newtown Turnpike. Martinez maintains in a former complaint that Fuchs kept him a bay and prevented him from treating the patient.

“I felt professionally belittled, demeaned and disregarded as if my presence was not needed and more so unwanted by Chief Fuchs,” Martinez wrote in a letter to Redding’s First Selectman, Julia Pemberton.

Martinez told Pemberton that he had filed a formal complaint because of “concern for the care I saw provided by Redding Police Chief Fuchs, and his conduct towards myself throughout the call as well.”

Fuchs responded by filing a complaint of his own with Martinez’s boss, charging the EMT had “soured against police” and that his “personal animus” was affecting how the police and fire departments work together.

Fuchs accuses Martinez of being inappropriate at the scene and not working with the police on scene.

Martinez denies having any ill will toward the department.

“I have nothing but the utmost respect for the men and women of law enforcement and the notion that I have ‘soured’ to the men and women I work alongside on a regular basis is nothing short of ridiculous, insulting and couldn’t be farther from the truth,” he wrote in his letter to Pemberton, saying Fuchs’ four-page complaint was “nothing short of a retaliatory statement, full of inconsistencies and libelous accusations.”

FUCHS DISCIPLINED

At the Nov. 20 meeting of the Board of Selectmen, Pemberton informed her colleagues of not only the two lawsuits against the department but of the complaints that had been filed against Fuchs.

She told them that an internal investigation had found that Fuchs’ conduct in response to Martinez had been “unbecoming of an employee of the town” and that he had been found to have “exercised poor judgment.”

Redding's police union has also filed a complaint against Fuchs on behalf of two members of the department.

Pemberton also said that the city has hired lawyer Patrick McHale of Kainen, Escalera, & McHale to conduct the probe into the police department’s handling of the Valenti case. The lawyer had been retained by the city in July to examine other complaints against Fuchs.

McHale’s investigation, which will include taking sworn testimony from witnesses, is not on a set timetable for completion.

Fuchs, who remains suspended without pay while that investigation continues, has hired his own lawyer.

File photo of Chief Douglas Fuchs by Christopher Capozziello, Stringer/Getty Images News/Getty Images