Roommate: Man 'going crazy' before dying in Raleigh police custody

Carl Devince King, 52, was taken into custody in the 3000 block of Slippery Elm Drive, behind Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School, at about 5:30 a.m. when police responded to a report of a disturbance. He died a short time later.

Cassandra Morris said she called 911 for help when King started acting irrationally at a nearby home.

"He’s going hysterical. He’s going crazy," Morris told the 911 dispatcher. "I don’t know if he broke into these people’s house, kicked the door in. He keeps slamming the door."

Later in the call, Morris begins screaming.

"Oh Lord, please don’t do me. Oh God, stop. Don’t do that. Calm down. Please stop," she said.

Before the call disconnects, Morris can be heard talking to someone in a calmer tone, telling the person she would get some water.

Morris later told WRAL News that King had been drinking and taking medications and "just snapped."

"He was just running through the house yelling. I was trying to calm him down, trying to get him a shower, but the shower didn't do him no good," she said.

Carl King had previously been charged with assault on a female and resisting an officer. He had been scheduled to appear in court next Monday on an assault charge from July.

Police have been called to the home more than a dozen times over the past two years, according to Raleigh Police Department records, including calls for an attempted suicide and domestic assaults.

King was swinging a lamp around Monday morning and broke it, Morris said. When police arrived, King was on the ground with broken glass from the lamp, she said.

"They had him on glass on his back. So, he was just like, 'I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm out of my mind,'" she said.

King's sister, Mary Maddox, described him as the youngest of nine siblings, who had four children of his own and three grandchildren with another on the way. He was a catering worker who was in relative good health, she said.

Master Officer S.A. Brown, Senior Officer A.L. Council, Officer C.J. Flagler, Officer A.J. Williams and Sgt. D.R. Williams have been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of a State Bureau of Investigation review of the incident, which is standard procedure. The Raleigh Police Department is conducting its own internal investigation to determine whether officers followed policy.