MPD announces close of Garza case

Author: Kelly Janis

On March 12, the Middlebury Police Department (MPD) released its final report on the death of Nicholas Garza, a first-year student who disappeared from the College last February, and whose body was found in Otter Creek nearly four months later. According to the report, Garza consumed at least 18 shots of liquor the night he died, and there is no evidence of foul play in his death.

"His body was pristine," said Chief of Police Thomas Hanley. "There were no indications of any trauma."

The 30-page summary of the case - which is publically accessible on the MPD's Web site and refers to interviewed students by name - has drawn a number of critical reactions.

"I am not sure why so much detail was included in the repoort," said Acting Provost Tim Spears.

"That is Vermont law," Hanley said. "This is public information. These are adults, and we cannot redact their names. Period, the end."

The report also details a Vermont Civil Violation Complaint for Consumption of Alcohol by a Minor and a Vermont Municipal Complaint for Public Urination Garza received in December of 2007, as well as an anecdotal incident in which Garza wandered through Marbleworks in an effort to reach the German House while intoxicated. In addition, investigators provide an estimated range of Garza's blood alcohol content at the time of his death (.240 to .330 percent, or three to four times the legal driving limit), despite the fact that the body's immersion in water and subsequent decomposition made the toxicology report inconclusive.

The police did not meet with Garza's family prior to making the report public.

"Of course we can't meet with them," Hanley said. "They're too far away. We're not to going to fly to New Mexico on this. There's no requirement to do that."

The MPD did send a copy of the report to the Garza family by certified mail on Feb. 27. Hanley tracked the parcel and said the intended recipients received two delivery notices, but never picked up the package.

"At some point, we can't wait for them to read this thing," Hanley said. "If they elect not to pick it up, that's out of our control. We were sitting on a report and not releasing it, which is contrary to law."

Upon reading the report online, Nick's mother, Natalie Garza, and her sister, Tanya Sierra, objected to its findings.

"The way the Middlebury police have handled this has been disgusting," Garza told the Associated Press on Friday.

"From the very beginning, the Middlebury police had the idea that it was a dumb, drunk frat boy who found a way to do damage to himself," Sierra said in the same article.

Although Hanley initially insisted in an interview with The Campus that there is "absolutely no reason to respond" to such criticisms, he eventually fired back.

"Why would we spend an inordinate amount of resources continually, from day one of this case right through to the end, if we already had a conclusion?" Hanley asked. "If you look at other towns where college students have been missing, they don't pour near the resources and effort into the case that we did. This was an open, objective investigation, and that sort of criticism is unwarranted and misplaced. It's grief-driven . . . Our investigators work for the truth. We don't advocate for anybody. We don't sit there and work for anybody. We don't sympathize or otherwise try to engage anything subjective on this case. We work for the case, independent of what anyone else feels, and that's what we did in this case."

A similar attitude toward Natalie Garza arose when Hanley was asked what his department might have done differently if given the opportunity.

"I wish the parent would have been a little more aggressive in reporting this early on," Hanley said, although the Department of Public Safety was, in fact, made aware of Garza's absence the day after he disappeared, and incorrectly concluded that he had gone on a trip to New Hampshire with a group of acquaintances. "We got this case five days and about two feet of snow later."

In contrast with these lingering resentments, College administrators are directing their gaze to the future.

"I've been here since 1990, first as a faculty member, and then more recently as an administrator, and we've lost students," Spears said. "We've lost students to car accidents. We've lost students to illnesses. And we lost Nick to the circumstances described in the police report. I think it's important to remember these students as we move on and we learn whatever we can from these tragedies."

Prior to the release of the investigation's findings, the College never formally acknowledged the role of alcohol in Garza's death.

"There were understandable sensitivities around connecting the use of alcohol to Nick during the course of the investigation," Spears said. "Nick's mother, and his entire family, were just holding out hope that Nick would be found."

The administration has, however, made indirect references.

"If you go back to last spring and look at the conversations and initiatives that have taken place on campus in the wake of Nick's death, you will see that the College was following up along the way," Spears said, pointing in particular to President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz's baccalaureate address last spring, conversations on alcohol use with student leaders in the fall and plans to convene an alcohol task force later this semester.

Spears said residential life staff will play an integral role as the dialogue continues.

According to the police report, during a preliminary search of Garza's room two days after he disappeared, then-CRA of Atwater Commons Lizzie Torkelson '07 encouraged a student to hide a bottle of rum in Garza's closet, in case Public Safety came through.

"Residential life staff are there first and foremost to keep students safe, and they need to continue to do that," Spears said. "They need to look after the students who are living on their hallways and keep the lines of communication open. At the same time, it's their responsibility to uphold College policy and law."

Much of this responsibility is also delegated to the student body at large.

"Students need to take hold of this issue," Spears said. "This is the kind of problem that no amount of administrative finger-wagging is going to solve."

Spears called on the College community to develop a "regularized, everyday understanding of how to follow up on the dangers that come with irresponsible drinking."

"This could have happened to any number of students," he said. "That's what we have to confront. I think students need to look at the tragedy that happened to Nick Garza and ask themselves about their own behavior, about their friends' behavior, and decide how they're going to handle a situation like this when it comes down the pike."

Spears said it is not his intention to cast blame on anyone for Garza's death.

"The nature of college life is this: When you go to school in northern New England and have the kind of winters we have, and students drink the way they do, you put yourself in harm's way," Spears said. "And who's going to handle the consequences? We have to look out for one another. And I hope that understanding begins to creep into student life if it isn't there already."