Arpad Sooky, 43, died by suicide while handcuffed in the back of a Central Township Police cruiser in August 2022 after he was arrested at his home near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the department and responding officers. (Arpad Sooky obituary)
The family of a Pennsylvania dentist who was able to get a hold of a handgun hidden in his waistband and shoot himself to death while handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser is suing the agency that arrested him for wrongful death.
Civil rights attorney Todd Hollis filed the federal lawsuit Monday in the Western District of Pennsylvania, which alleges Arpad Sooky’s rights under the United States Constitution were violated due to the Center Township Police Department and its responding officers’ failure to provide him with necessary care and properly search him for weapons.
Center Township Police was serving a search warrant at Sooky’s home in Aliquippa near Pittsburgh on Aug. 12, 2022. Two days prior, officers had responded to the home because Sooky’s father with dementia had gotten out. When officers returned the father to the home, they saw guns at the home which Sooky was not allowed to have because of prior involuntary mental health commitments.
With the warrant in hand, officers knocked on the door around noon on Aug. 12, 2022. According to the lawsuit, Sooky cracked the door open and officers asked to talk with him and they forced their way in when he refused. Sooky ran into the kitchen and officers grabbed him and brought him toward the front door. He had a gun in his hands and officers used a Taser on him several times to disarm him and then put him in handcuffs, the lawsuit said.
Sooky, 43, was in a prone position for “a lengthy period of time” during which the officers had adequate time to search him for other weapons before he was taken to a police cruiser, the lawsuit states. Officers were driving him to jail when he somehow got access to the gun in his waistband and then fatally shot himself in the mouth.
“Had the Decedent been properly searched and secured, he would have been prevented from accessing weapons to harm himself,” the lawsuit stated.
Officers also should have been aware of Sooky’s long battle with mental health issues, the lawsuit alleges. Center Township police were called to his home numerous times since 2015 regarding his mental health and suicidal statements.
In a call in 2015, his wife told officers he was verbally abusive and had threatened her. She also told an officer that Sooky had made suicidal statements in the past and put a gun in his mouth. Sooky was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in September and November 2017. Before the latter commitment, Sooky’s wife showed officers a safe that stored five guns, but instead of confiscating the weapons, they told her to keep the key away from her husband, the lawsuit alleges.
Medics also advised police of a “large cache of weapons” after a medical call involving his father in July 2022, the lawsuit claims.
All of the officers in Sooky’s arrest knew or should have known about his mental health problems, the lawsuit alleges. Some of the officers involved in Sooky’s arrest had also responded to prior calls about his mental health which constitutes “deliberate indifference,” according to the lawsuit.
“The Decedent’s extensively documented history of mental health illness, threats of suicide by firearm, and attempted suicide created a degree of risk which represented a strong likelihood that if the Decedent was not properly searched and secured after arrest, that self-inflicted harm would occur,” the lawsuit said.
Local CBS affiliate KDKA reported the Beaver County District Attorney’s Office asked Pennsylvania State Police to conduct an investigation which found no criminal acts by the responding officers.
The Center Township Police Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Sooky was well-respected by his patients. Several told local NBC affiliate WPXI they were shocked by his death.
“I didn’t believe it. He didn’t have any kind of mean or aggressive-type thing. He seemed very easygoing,” former patient Allan Knapp told the TV station. “Doesn’t make sense. Makes no sense at all.”
According to his obituary, Sooky went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and the USC School of Dentistry. He served as a dentist for the U.S. Army and then in private practice after his release from the military.
You can read the entire lawsuit here.
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