Her son died in police custody, but this mother can't get any answers

Friends and relatives cried in Pamela White's arms at Inspira Medical Center Vineland's emergency room. Yells of "They killed him," about the police, erupted from several of White's loved ones. Detectives told White she could not see her son's body - the medical examiner had to first, because it was evidence.

Phillip White, 32, was pronounced dead at the South Jersey hospital after a scuffle four miles away with Vineland police, who had responded to a 911 call about a man screaming on a residential street that morning, March 31, 2015. A bystander's recording of part of the encounter showed an officer kneeling over White, who lay in the street. Authorities said White reached for an officer's holstered weapon, and in the video, another officer released a dog onto White.

White's family saw his body five days later, on Easter. Officers told Pamela White he had had a heart attack. A death certificate from the medical examiner suggested he had been on PCP.

Pamela White expected more findings to come out. Then a month passed. Then several more. Now, more than a year has gone by with almost no answers from authorities.

The Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office has yet to provide autopsy or toxicology reports to White's family, leaving the official cause of death unknown. The Prosecutor's Office also has not ruled on whether the officers' use of force was justified.

The lack of answers has frustrated not only Pamela White, but also Stuart Alterman, a lawyer who represents one of the officers and is seeking the same information as White's family.

"It's ridiculous," Alterman said. "It's unfortunate, and it certainly doesn't lead to a healthy outcome. If you're going to do something, do it already."

Pamela White, 59, calls the wait "torture."

Her attorney, Stanley King, has enlisted the help of forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who performed an autopsy for Michael Brown's family after a police officer fatally shot Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, sparking protests and riots.

Baden, who has performed more than 20,000 autopsies since 1960 and is a former chief medical examiner in New York City, said he, too, needs autopsy and other reports to reach a conclusion.

"A year is an extraordinarily long time to wait for such a case," Baden said. "There's no reason for it."

First Assistant Prosecutor Harold Shapiro said Tuesday his office must conduct a detailed and impartial investigation.

"To the best of our ability, we are doing so," he said. "At the present time, because of the confidential nature of this process, I cannot comment further."

Investigations of police-involved deaths do take time. Shapiro's office took eight months to disclose its findings in the case of Jerame Reid, 36, whom a police officer fatally shot during a car stop in Bridgeton in December 2014. In Camden County, the Prosecutor's Office took seven months to release findings in the fatal shooting of Oscar Camacho Jr., 33, who held a BB gun that officers thought was a revolver during the July 2015 encounter.

The officers were cleared in both cases.

Autopsy and toxicology reports are generally sealed during police death investigations, but a prosecutor's office can choose to release them, a spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office said. A prosecutor's office also decides whether to present the case to a grand jury, before submitting its findings to the state Division of Criminal Justice.

For now, Pamela White only has the word of detectives and the short videos of her son's arrest. She can't bring herself to watch them.

"Why would I want to watch my son be murdered?" she said recently from her Vineland home, facing a framed picture of Phillip and his smiling son, Tyreese, now 9, and another photo of her and Phillip on a sunny Mother's Day in 2014. Phillip also has a daughter, Iyonna, 18.

The encounter between White and police started on Grape Street, a residential block near Vineland's downtown. Pamela White said she does not know why her son was there.

A man who called 911 around 11 a.m. to report a man - White - screaming outside told dispatchers, "I don't know what the hell's wrong with him."

Alterman, the officer's attorney, said White was on PCP and cocaine. King and White's family said that even if that's true, the officers' actions likely caused White's death.

Videos of the incident, which NBC10 obtained last year from witnesses, showed one officer yelling to a K-9 dog, "Get him, get him," before the dog climbed over White as he lay on the pavement.

White's family said the video also shows an officer punching and the dog biting White.

Authorities said officers handcuffed White and called for medical assistance after noticing he was having "respiratory distress." White became unresponsive in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Two officers, Rich Janasiak and Louis Platania, were placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure in police-involved death cases.

Pamela White learned of her son's death at Progresso Quality Foods, where she worked as a site supervisor for AlliedBarton Security Services, when police walked in and told her Phillip had a heart attack.

She screamed.

Phillip was her "gentle giant," the man who shoveled snow outside her home, loved her meals of potato salad and fried chicken, and joked with her on the deck where they often spent sunny afternoons together. She had raised Phillip to be a good Christian, and awakened him and his brother, Paige, when they were young by blasting gospel music.

Still, Phillip was a rebel, his mother said. He dropped out of Vineland High School his junior year not long before having his first child, and had brushes with the law.

He was incarcerated four times between 2003 and 2012, three of them for drug offenses, and the fourth for aggravated assault, according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

Pamela White said he worked various jobs, including making bread at a Vineland industrial park, and tried to obtain his GED. He maintained a close relationship with his children, she said.

On that March day at the hospital, she and her pastor, James A. Dunkins, pleaded with detectives to see Phillip's body. But his death was under investigation, and it's standard practice in New Jersey for families in such cases not to see the body until it is brought to a funeral home.

That's where three of Phillip's family members saw him that Easter. Pamela White wasn't among them - she wasn't ready yet.

For the viewing two days later, she picked out a navy blue suit and cuff links for Phillip to wear. The viewing would be the first time she had seen him since he left her home the day before he died, telling her, "All right, Mom, I'll see you tomorrow."

She remembers vividly the moment she laid eyes on him in the casket.

"Probably the hardest thing I ever had to do - it was the worst thing that I ever had to do," Pamela White said, pausing to wipe away tears with a towel in her living room. "And I'll never forget it."

Nor will she forget the promise she made there.

That she loved Phillip. That the family would never forget him. And that she would do anything to ensure "justice was served."

That was 392 days ago.

mboren@phillynews.com

856-779-3829 @borenmc