A grieving mother has filed suit against a swath of New Orleans officials — including Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, Sheriff Susan Hutson and Coroner Dwight McKenna — alleging that their agencies’ negligence resulted in the untimely death of her son and, later, the gross mishandling of his body.
Lawyers on behalf of Rita Gentile, who resides in Columbia County, New York, filed the lawsuit in New Orleans federal court late last month, alleging that multiple city agencies failed to recognize and properly treat the clear signs of mental distress in 26-year-old Dante Gentile, repeatedly arresting him and releasing him from jail without routing him to mental healthcare prior to his suicide on July 1, 2023.
The agencies engaged in “conscious and voluntary acts and deliberate indifference” that led to his death, the lawsuit claims.
The suit further alleges that the Coroner’s Office, after receiving Gentile’s body, did not properly refrigerate it and took more than two months to identify Gentile and contact his family, despite the fact that the office had access to fingerprints and belongings that could readily identify him.
It’s the latest in a string of similar claims of dysfunction in McKenna’s office. As WWL-TV and the Times-Picayune reported last summer, the New Orleans Coroner’s Office has failed to identify bodies and notify next of kin in a timely matter in a number of cases. At the time, McKenna cited challenges with both staffing and funding the office, as well as with failing facilities.
McKenna declined to comment on the most recent lawsuit.
Dante Gentile came into contact multiple times with local law enforcement agencies, including the New Orleans Police Department, the City Park Police Department and the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, in the days before he killed himself last summer. The agencies all recognized his acute psychological distress, according to the suit, but failed to ensure that he received the necessary mental health care.
The lawsuit’s timeline begins on Friday, June 23, 2023, when the City Park Police first arrested Gentile after an employee at the park noticed him acting strangely and suspected that he may be under the influence of narcotics or alcohol. Following his arrest, Gentile was jailed at the city jail, where medical records noted that it was “urgent” that he see a mental health professional, Rita Gentile’s attorneys wrote. But deputies did not allow him to see a psychiatrist because he was “fast-tracked” for release. According to the lawsuit, several requests for Gentile to see a mental healthcare professional were denied and he was released the next day.
On Sunday, June 25, 2023, Gentile returned to City Park. This time, he walked into the Café du Monde fully nude, and again, the City Park Police arrested him and took him to jail.
The next day, Gentile appeared in court where he told a judge that voices were telling him to kill himself. The judge advised that he be put on a suicide watch.
On Tuesday, the prison did a psychiatric evaluation of Gentile and a psychiatrist diagnosed him with an “unspecified psychosis not due to a substance or known physiological condition.” The psychiatrist prescribed him an anti-psychotic medication and kept him on suicide watch.
The psychiatrist scheduled a follow-up for two days later, but Gentile was unable to make it because of a court hearing. The psychiatrist wrote instructions to continue suicide watch and route Gentile to University Medical Center’s emergency room when he was released. Instead, the Sheriff’s Office released Gentile with no instructions or help to seek further mental healthcare, according to the suit.
Verite News requested comment from the City Park Police and the Sheriff’s Office but both did not respond in time for publication.
The same day Gentile was released from prison, he walked up the Interstate 10 off-ramp near North Claiborne Avenue and St. Philip Street. There, a motorist reported him standing with his hands together praying as if he wanted to jump.
NOPD deployed 10 officers to intervene. But the lawsuit claims none of them appeared to be part of the Crisis Intervention Team, which is trained in de-escalating mental health crises.
According to the lawsuit, Gentile threatened to jump off the ramp if the officers advanced on him. One officer tried to lure Gentile off the bridge by bribing him with “a drink” and “a piece of ass.”
After nearly half an hour, Gentile walked down the bridge with a few officers, who then released him without arrest.
Hours later, Gentile walked to the Falstaff Building, located about a block away from NOPD’s headquarters on South Broad Street, climbed the stairs up to the roof, then jumped. A Falstaff resident later reported a man lying face down, unresponsive, in the grass in front of the building.
NOPD dispatched officers to the building, including three who had been present during the off-ramp incident. According to the lawsuit, body-cam footage indicates that one officer recognized Gentile from the night before, but the report made no mention of this.
Further, despite the fact that Gentile had already been arrested twice that week and also had credit cards in his possession with his name on them, the NOPD designated him as an “unknown victim,” according to the suit.
The NOPD and Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
McKenna’s office then took possession of Gentile’s body. But according to the lawsuit, a refrigeration unit was not working, so Gentile’s body began decomposing at an accelerated rate.
The lawsuit further alleges that the Coroner’s Office had access to Gentile’s fingerprints, on account of his multiple arrests, but failed to immediately identify him. Ultimately, it took more than two months before the Coroner’s office made its first attempt to reach Gentile’s family, the suit claims.
Rita Gentile would not learn of her son’s death until September 15, 2023, a full two and a half months after he had jumped from the Falstaff Building and died. But because his remains were so decomposed, she was not permitted to see him before he was cremated.
“The conduct of the Coroner’s Office in failing to properly identify Dante Gentile when it had access to both his fingerprints and his name is not only grossly negligent, but also extreme, reckless, and outrageous – as is the failure to properly refrigerate Dante’s body,” Rita Gentile’s attorneys wrote.
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