The 550-pound Bel Air man who died after police pepper-sprayed him posed no threat to officers because of a debilitating back injury and poor health, the man?s attorney said.
David Matarazzo, 47, died early Tuesday morning after being pepper-sprayed and handcuffed by state troopers called to his Hillside Drive home, police said. He had been waving a metal chair and holding a rock, police said, while threatening to kill his family and neighbors.
Troy Powers, the attorney who has represented the 6-foot 7 Matarazzo in a series of workers-compensation claims, said his client had been hobbled by injuries and ill health so much that he could not have been a threat to the Maryland state troopers who sprayed him.
Powers did not suggest the officers acted improperly. But, the attorney added: “He was not terribly agile, not terribly fleet of foot. The police may have been intimidated by his size, but I’m not sure how much of a threat he would have posed.”
Five years ago, Matarazzo had fallen 8 feet from a scaffold, Powers said, causing back injuries and other physical ailments that left him permanently disabled and unable to work.
Gregory Shipley, a state police spokesman, said Matarazzo refused troopers’ orders to drop the chair Monday night, waved it at them and bombarded them with verbal threats and racial slurs. When Matarazzo resisted arrest, troopers sprayed him once with a short burst of pepper spray before handcuffing him, Shipley said.
After Matarazzo was cuffed, police hosed off his eyes and face, but he began having difficulty breathing and had to be given emergency aid by the troopers and three sheriff’s deputies, police said. He was declared dead by paramedics from Bel Air Fire Co. just after midnight.
Matarazzo had been treated and released from a local hospital after threatening suicide Sunday night. But Powers said he did not think a recent appeal of his disability ruling was a factor in his emotional state.
“The appeal process had barely begun,” Powers said.
The two troopers who arrested Matarazzo have been placed on leave, and an autopsy is awaiting the results of toxicology tests, Shipley said.
The state medical examiner?s office refused to comment Friday on the possible cause of death because the investigation is pending.
Some experts have told The Examiner the pepper spray could have had a more severe effect on the 6-foot-7 Matarazzo because his size put him at a higher risk for heart problems andbreathing difficulties.
Examiner reporter Virgil Dickson contributed to this article.
