WORT 89.9FM Madison

Loved Ones Await Answers For Fitchburg Police Shooting, Killing of Kevin Price

Fitchburg police shot Kevin Price on the morning of August 12th, after one of his neighbors called 911 to report a domestic disturbance. Kevin then spent three days in St. Mary’s hospital - but his family wasn’t informed until his death on August 15th. The state’s Department of Justice is still conducting an investigation. PJ Chamberlain, a friend of Kevin’s, spoke to WORT News Producer Faye Parks today with permission from Kevin’s family. He says that Kevin’s death points to a gap in our community’s mental health resources. And the failure to notify Kevin’s loved ones in a timely fashion, he says, should never happen again. Image courtesy: PJ Chamberlain, Kevin Price pictured on the right.

Broadcast on:: 19 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

Thank you for coming down to the station today, PJ. Thank you for having me. So we're here to talk about your friend Kevin Price. Can you tell me about him? Yeah, Kevin and I met around 2016. He was working in the Orpheum Box office down on State Street, which is a job he really enjoyed doing. And we started hanging out. We had a lot of mutual interests. We spent a lot of time together. We like playing video games a lot. So that was kind of what connected us. It feels so like time just flew by, but we spent like three years hanging out pretty much almost every day. And so I understand Kevin had been struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse issues after his mother's passing in 2017. So can you speak on that a bit? In 2017, his mom passed away unexpectedly. He just like, he really internalized it. And he never seemed to really be able to process it, deal with it. He never really even spoke to me about it. I just got a text because I hadn't seen him in a couple of days that said, like, my mom died. And that was about all he said about it. And I think it was just really difficult for him to accept us something that was real, so surreal that they're gone. And it's hard to live with it day to day and accept it. And I think he just was never able to do that. And even like on his memorial wall, his grandma wrote that out of all the grandchildren that he was the one most affected by her death and unable to process it and that she knew that something would happen to him because he was not able to process it. And but nobody could expect this, you know? But yeah, it just it affected him so deeply. And in ways like, I don't know that his friends or family really realized until it was kind of too late in a way. He dealt with it with unhealthy coping mechanisms. You know, he didn't really have, you know, like mental health in this country and mental health support is just like not there for everybody, especially those of us who like don't have the time and money to spend on it. And it's very difficult to get into see people. It's very difficult to find people to help you process that kind of grief. There are just so many systems that failed him leading up to this and really like processing that grief and getting to a better place with it, dealing with it was just something that he was unable to do and didn't have the support to do. So I'd like to now touch on the events of August 12th. I know that we're still waiting on a more detailed investigation from the state's Department of Justice, but to your knowledge, what happened that morning? Well, I think there are a lot of things that just happened in the exact wrong way that led to Kevin's death. There was a 911 hangup call that a neighbor had placed. And so the police showed up not knowing like what the situation was, what was going on, very unprepared. And so the neighbor said, my neighbors are fighting. You know, the police went there and, you know, I'm not sure exactly what happened. I feel like the only people who will know for sure the people were in the room when it happened. They said he had a knife and they asked him or, you know, told him to put it down. He didn't. I'm not sure exactly what happened at that point other than that he was shot. And then they took him to SSM hospital and then, yeah, three days later, he passed away alone. So as you mentioned, his family wasn't told what had happened to him until after he passed away three days after a law enforcement shot him. So how has that impacted Kevin's loved ones? Yeah. I think like other than Kevin's passing, it's like the most upsetting thing about all of it. And it's really already difficult for everybody to deal with the grief and process it. And, you know, I was already upset that Kevin passed, but then finding out that his family had no idea he was in the hospital for those three days. It just like really blew everything open for me and made me feel like I needed to help find justice for for Kevin's family for Kevin, you know, and deal with the grief in that way. And I think it's just awful because if the family knew if his friends knew they would have been there, you know, like his friends would have come from her scene immediately. His grandma would have come from her scene immediately. He would have had his friends in the room, family, brothers, uncles, aunts, his grandma would have been there. She would have prayed for him like every second that she could have. And it's just it's too bad because I hate to be overly idealistic, but I just always wonder like, could the outcome have been different if people were there for him? Could he have made it through? So again, the details are still pretty murky, but do you know why they weren't informed in time? I don't know where the like mismanagement lies. I don't know like where communication was lapsed. I don't know if it was a individual decision. I don't know if it was a entity decision. I just know that the family wasn't contacted and it just seemed so awful. And I think the thing that in this situation, everybody can kind of find common ground on is like not knowing your loved one, your friend, you know, is in the hospital for three days and then then passing. It's just so awful for anybody to think of. I think finding out that answer, finding out why the family wasn't contacted is one of the most important things right now and like preventing that from happening to others as well, preventing that from happening to people in the future and just trying to find a better system to make it work. Like, I don't know how it works when you are unconscious in the hospital. How do you know, if you don't go to the right hospital, how do they figure out who your family is? How do they get a hold of them? So like just finding out why his family in particular wasn't contacted I think is very important and then again, preventing that from happening to people in the future. I'm curious too. Kevin's family was ultimately informed. Do you know who informed them and how? So his brother lives in Madison and I believe the police actually just like showed up at his door and told him that his brother passed away, which is, I mean, I don't know if that's normal, but it just seems so like, I guess I don't know what would be better, a phone call or being in person, but it just seems so like surreal. I mean, everything feels so surreal. But to think on top of that, like that the family didn't know and then the way they found out was by having his brother have a police officer show up to his door to tell him his brother had passed away. It just all feels so strange and like unfortunate to me. So I understand you set up a GoFundMe to help Kevin's family. Can you tell us about that and how the money will be spent? Unfortunately, when people pass away, there's like a huge financial burden to bury them or take care of their remains. And so the main goal for the GoFundMe is to help the family with funeral expenses. I think they are still struggling with Kevin's mom dying in 2017. I think there's still some financial burden from that. And so I think first and foremost for funeral expenses, making sure that Kevin has memorialized properly along with his mom. And then I think anything in excess would be for legal expenses or to help the family with grief. Like I said before, mental health services can be really expensive. And so I think like making sure that they're able to process this and speak to people and try to work through this as best as possible. I think that money would also help for that as well. We are coming up on our time here, but is there anything else you'd like to add that we haven't touched on yet? I have reached out to a lot of different groups and organizations, politicians even about this. And I think just like finding justice for Kevin will be so many different things. It's not just going to be about finding out why his family was contacted or wasn't contacted while he was in the hospital. You know, it's going to be about preventing this from happening with someone else. It's going to be about having more access to mental health and grief services for people in the future. And I think just like having a better response to mental health emergencies. I think a lot of people in the community are worried that calling 911 for someone who's having a mental health emergency is going to be fatal. And I think we need like a better system so that people aren't scared to get help for others. And so I think that's one of the things. I mean, there's so many different things that could have gone differently for him. But I think, like I said, finding justice for him means a lot of different things. And the other thing was so my friend Sarah passed away in 2020 of an overdose and that affected me so deeply and greatly and it's been really tough to work through. And I found out last month that her cat actually had to be put down on the 15th. And I found that out before I found out about Kevin. And then, you know, I found out that Kevin actually passed away on this very same day after being in the hospital for three days. It's so kind of silly. But I just have this like hope that they were able to kind of like help each other go home to their mothers. That Kevin and Izzy, Sarah's cat, are, you know, helping each other find Sarah and Kevin's mom, Erin. And that's the only thing that I can think of that, you know, makes me feel a little bit better about them both going on the same day as just the thought that like maybe there's some meaning in that. And that I hope that they're all at peace together. That was PJ Chamberlain. We'll continue to follow Kevin Price's story as the Department of Justice conducts her investigation. The link to the GoFundMe for Kevin Price's family will be included in the online version of this story.