“We have not heard anything at all from the Attorney General’s office in 2023,” says Mary McAlpin, the mother of Dan McAlpin, a cherished member of the regional community who was shot and killed by a state trooper last year under highly questionable circumstances.

The McAlpins, Mary and David, have filed a complaint at the US Northern District Court of New York demanding a jury trial for the trooper, Jason T. Wurtz.

On Sept. 9, 2022, trooper Wurtz fired five shots at Dan McAlpin, who was hit by four of them. According to police bodycam footage released by the state, three shots were fired into McAlpin’s back as he lay on the floor, having been tased by another officer, and then shot in the shoulder by Wurtz, as he fell down the last few steps on the staircase from his room on the second floor of the McAlpin family home in Cragsmoor. Two of those three bullets killed him, medical examiners found.

Now more than a year later, Mary McAlpin said after being promised support by the state Office of the Attorney General, her and her husband David have been “ghosted” by the OAG.

The events of the night of Dan McAlpin’s death reveal some frightening aspects of life in New York State these days, highlighting the many pitfalls of police officers dealing with people having mental health crises. Following a call for assistance made by Dan to the county’s Mobile Mental Health unit, things blew up into a law enforcement frenzy. Training and good sense seem to have been abandoned by the cops at the scene.

The court papers filed by the McAlpins begin like this: “Daniel McAlpin was shot to death in his home by Defendant New York State Trooper Jason T. Wurtz. Mr. McAlpin had not committed any crime nor harmed anyone. He had no criminal history. He was in the midst of a mental health episode, and he needed care. Wurtz was not there to provide it.”

The Mobile Mental Health team called for police backup, investigators found, because they believed that Dan had a gun. It turned out that he was holding a BB gun and a knife.

A number of state troopers and county sheriff’s deputies raced up to the house on Clark Road. Matt Pozorski, the sculptor of the Boy and the Leaking Boot in Ellenville’s Liberty Square, was an eyewitness to the events that night. Among many other things, he is a Cragsmoor volunteer and is an EMT with the department’s First Aid and Rescue Squad. He had responded to the general call that went out, and he responded as Fire, not as First Aid and Rescue. That meant he was allowed into the scene of the incident.

“The event had been going on for half an hour when I got there,” Pozorski, a close friend of the victim, told Kingston Wire. “I got the call when I was in Sullivan County. The house was full of police officers. County Mobile Health were staging outside. Ellenville Rescue paramedics were staring down the road.” This is common when a scene is described as “unsecured.”

“The scene inside was very agitated and excited. As an EMT, when dealing with mental health crises, my training and experience tells me you have to be the calm person in the room. The patient is agitated and frightened, you need to calm them down. The mood in there was the opposite of calm. Dan was upstairs and he was agitated. I didn’t do a headcount but I estimate there were perhaps 10 police officers in the house. I saw two [assault rifles.] Dan was agitated, he was being shouted at and weapons were being pointed at him. At no point was anyone indicated to me that they were in charge of the scene.”

Much of what Pozorski says can be seen in the bodycam video released by the Attorney General’s Office earlier this year. “I saw the call was going bad, and to make it go well there needed to be one person doing the communication with Dan,” Pozorski said. “No weapons being pointed at him, since that doesn’t calm anyone down.”

Pozorski managed to get an officer’s attention and began explaining this concept to him, but it was too late. “Almost immediately thereafter someone tasered him and then there was the gunfire.”

To view the video is especially shocking. A lot of police are crowded into a small space at the bottom of a steep staircase. Dan is not visible until the very end. The officers are clearly agitated. One has an assault rifle and points it into the stairwell. To the viewer, it seems there is no sense of control being exercised at the scene and any training for this kind of event seems to have been completely forgotten.

“I don’t think any officers knew what their intended mission was,” Pozorski said. “There was no overall command and you had many officers each making their own decision on what to do.”

The first two shots fired by Trooper Wurtz went into the stairwell. One struck Dan McAlpin in the shoulder, as he was falling, after being tased, and saying “Ow-ow-ow” loudly, a not uncommon occurrence in tasing incidents. The second round missed him and went through the wall of the stairwell and into the kitchen which was full of police officers. That bullet was later retrieved.

Wurtz continued firing, even as Dan fell face down on the floor and three bullets went into his back. He was dead when they looked at him soon after. On the video a voice can be heard saying, “We got him.”

Four days later, the Ulster County Medical Examiner ruled that Dan’s death was a homicide. All deaths at the hands of police are now investigated by the OAG’s Office of Special Investigation. In March, they released the bodycam videos, but since then, silence. The office, which has the option of charging or not charging Wurtz, stated last week that their investigation continues. The McAlpins’ lawyer, Sam Shapiro, said he believes there’s good grounds for the case to be before a grand jury by now.

“We met with them (OAG staffers) once in Poughkeepsie, for a preliminary viewing of the bodycam footage,” Mary McAlpin said. “They also came one time to look at the house. That was the last we heard from them.”

Mary McAlpin added that there’s been no contact between the office and the family for months. “What’s really weird and so upsetting is that they were effusive at first. It was all, ‘Anytime you call, I’m here for you.’ Well, we called once and we never heard back.”