A Mount Carmel widow says former borough police officers beat her husband into a coma after a drunken driving arrest in 2020, according to a federal lawsuit.
The beating contributed to Gary Updike’s death almost four years later, his widow, Lauren Updike, contends in the suit.
It’s at least the sixth federal lawsuit filed against the borough and former borough police officers charged with crimes for mistreating suspects. All the suits remain pending.
Efforts to reach the borough’s solicitor for comment Tuesday on the latest suit were not immediately successful.
Besides the Northumberland County borough, the suit names former borough officers David Donkochik, Kyle Schauer and Jonathan McHugh as defendants. Each was sentenced last year to long prison sentences for conspiring to abuse arrested suspects. The suit also names another former officer, Evan Freiler, and an officer identified only as John Doe.
“The decedent (Gary Updike) developed multiple health issues as a result of the beating,” the suit says.
Who was Gary Updike?
Gary Updike died June 30, 2024, “as a result of the injuries he suffered from the aforementioned beating,” the suit says. He died a week shy of his 47th birthday. He had six children.
Borough police arrested Updike and charged him with felony criminal mischief and driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance just before 4 a.m. on Sept. 20, 2020.
“A disgruntled resident went on a drug-induced ride,” Mount Carmel Police Chief Chris Buhay told the Sunbury Daily Item newspaper at the time. “He hit two of our cars, totaled one of them. He’s in the hospital.”
Besides the two police cars, Schauer told the newspaper Updike smashed his car into at least five other cars on borough streets.
“He just told us he was under the influence and trying to have some fun,” Schauer told the newspaper. “He was taken into custody and taken back to the station, then transported to Geisinger (Medical Center) in Danville. It didn’t appear he had life-threatening injuries.”
McHugh and Freiler assisted in the investigation, the newspaper story says.
Updike pleaded guilty to both charges in August 2021. A Northumberland County judge sentenced him in February 2022 to spend five to 23 months in prison and to spend three years and six months on probation, according to online court dockets.
In April 2022, Updike was sentenced five more years of probation after pleading guilty for driving under the influence on May 18, 2020, four months before the stop that’s the subject of the lawsuit.
Arrest abuse allegations
The suit says police made “a routine arrest” of Updike for driving under the influence “after a brief pursuit.”
At the police station, officers handcuffed and shackled him.
“While cuffed and shackled, in an area known to all defendants to be free of video recorders, defendants Freiler and McHugh beat ... (Updike) until he was unconscious,” the suit says.
Updike was taken “to a local hospital where he was in a coma from the beating,” according to the suit.
Cops pleaded guilty, sent to prison
In June 2023, a federal grand jury indicted McHugh, Donkochik and Schauer for conspiring to deprive rights under the color of law and deprivation of rights under color of law.
Based on grand jury testimony, prosecutors said the officers punched, kicked, choked, tased, beat, body-slammed, pushed down a flight of stairs, pepper sprayed and dragged suspects, according to the indictment. The incidents happened between June 15, 2018 and Dec. 3, 2021.
Donkochik, McHugh and Schauer “took steps to ensure that video of the arrests was not captured by police cameras."
If the cameras recorded “footage that incriminated them,” they “failed to take steps” to preserve the footage.
Instead, the officers reported suspects “acted in a manner requiring violence” and falsely charged them with aggravated assault, resisting arrest and related offenses “to conceal their own use of violence,” according to the indictment.
The indictment names at least 20 victims, but only by their initials. Gary Updike’s initials are among them with a date, Sept. 20, that matches the date he drove under the influence.
The indictment accuses only McHugh of involvement in the attack on Updike and says he kicked and punched him, resulting in “bodily injury.”
Neither the indictment nor the lawsuit detail Updike’s injuries.
McHugh, Donkochik and Schauer pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge and other charges were dropped.
In September, Chief U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann sentenced Donkochik to seven years in prison, McHugh to six years in prison and Schauer to four years. Each faces two years of supervision after their release.
