Tormel Pittman of New Brunswick leads a rally outside the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office in Trenton on Oct. 2, 2025, to protest the police killing of his aunt Deborah Terrell, 68. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
Activists and relatives of an elderly woman gunned down by New Brunswick police in August rallied outside the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office Thursday to urge authorities to release all footage from the deadly encounter.
They also demanded that the officers be fired and prosecuted for failing to call in mental health professionals and instead shooting Deborah Terrell, 68, with a gun, pepper spray, and a Taser after a seven-minute standoff at her apartment in a high-rise for senior citizens. Authorities are required to contact mental health specialists when dealing with barricaded people in mental crisis.
Tormel Pittman, Terrell’s nephew, said witnesses gave the family video of the officers handcuffing his bloodied, dying aunt and dragging her down the hallway — moments not included in the video the Attorney General’s Office shared publicly from officers’ body-worn cameras.
“You show footage of them getting on the elevator, having a discourse with other staff members, but you choose to edit out the part of being handcuffed and drug down the hallway. What do you think type of investigation they’re going to do as far as holding the cops accountable? What type of justice is the family going to get?” Pittman said. “The community no longer trust the Attorney General’s Office or this process.”
Officers were called to the high-rise on Neilson Street around 4 a.m. on Aug. 8 in response to reports that Terrell was disturbing other tenants, according to the Attorney General’s Office. Terrell refused to open her door or respond to officers, so the cops left and returned at 7:38 a.m. after a staffer called 911 to report that Terrell had threatened neighbors with a knife, the Attorney General’s Office said.
Officers’ body camera footage shows that she refused to come out of the apartment, shouting at the officers intermittently from inside and poking a knife out of the bottom of the door. She opened and closed the door several times with a knife in hand, the footage shows.
The third time she opened the door, the officers shot her with pepper spray and a stun gun, causing her to retreat briefly back inside and then out again, still armed with the knife. As she staggered into the hallway toward the officers, one fired his gun at her twice, the footage shows. She died shortly after at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Pittman said his aunt had schizophrenia and required mental health care, not a violent police response.
It’s unclear why New Brunswick officers did not partner with mental health professionals when they responded to Terrell’s apartment. The officers did call emergency medical technicians to stand by outside the building “for a potential evaluation,” according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Under a directive Attorney General Matt Platkin issued just over a year ago, law enforcement officers are required to “slow and stabilize” encounters in barricade situations.
The directive requires police to bring a mental health professional when they respond to barricaded people, wait instead of forcing their way inside, bring less lethal weapons like Tasers to such calls, and immediately involve a supervisor. It came a few weeks after Fort Lee police shot Victoria Lee, 25, to death after she had barricaded herself in her apartment during a mental crisis.
The state also has a program, called Arrive Together, that pairs police with mental health professionals.
Platkin spokesman Michael Symons said the program now operates in all 21 counties and averages more than 700 interactions a month.
“(It) has established a proven record of responding to 911 calls for behavioral health crises and preventing them from escalating into violence, injury, or arrest,” Symons said. “However, not all calls with a potential mental health component involve ARRIVE — in part because of limitations on available resources, and in part because, at the behest of the program’s partners, licensed social workers and mental health providers are not put in danger.”
Symons said he couldn’t comment further because the case remains under investigation.
Thursday’s rally was just the latest of several since Terrell’s death. Advocates also shut down Route 18 and have taken their cause to New Brunswick City Council meetings.
The Attorney General’s Office typically identifies officers involved in fatalities but didn’t this time and also blurred their faces in the body camera footage, citing “threats being made against them.”
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