Four months after 26-year-old Gerard Roldan III died after being struck by a Cobleskill Village Police car, a man who never met him is demanding answers.
In a letter read to Mayor Linda Holmes and trustees at their meeting Tuesday, Robert Kerley of West Fulton asked whether the State Attorney General’s office is investigating the November 9, 2018 accident, which occurred while two police cars were trying to intercept a speeder on East Main Street and Mr. Roldan walked into the path of the lead car, which couldn’t avoid him.
Police said both cars stopped and officers administered CPR.
Mr. Roldan was transported to Cobleskill Regional Hospital, but didn’t survive his injuries.
Mr. Kerley said after Tuesday’s meeting that he didn’t know Mr. Roldan, but wants to know who’s investigating the fatal accident, whether the investigation is still going on, and when any findings will be released.
Mr. Kerley said he was particularly irked by the fact that when he called the Village Office on Friday, March 15, he was referred to Village Attorney Shawn Smith.
“The dictation to a citizen by a government to ‘call my lawyer,’ smacks of obfuscation, abrogation, and insult, in my opinion,” he read.
After Mr. Kerley’s call, Mr. Smith said Tuesday, he followed up with the State AG’s Office—which is conducting an investigation—but said no one is allowed to comment on either the investigation or the findings until it’s completed.
“They don’t want us litigating it in the newspaper,” Mr. Smith said. “It’s out of our hands…we’re not doing it [the investigation] ourselves.”
The accident occurred near the Sav-A-Lot grocery on wet and rain-slicked roads.
Police Chief Richard Bialkowski said the officer whose car struck Mr. Roldan voluntarily submitted to an alcohol test, which was negative, and also voluntarily submitted a blood sample to be tested for drugs.
The officer returned to work in December.
Answering some of Mr. Kerley’s questions Tuesday, Chief Bialkowski also said he can’t comment on the investigations, but said immediately after the accident, three different investigations were launched by the State Police, Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallery, and the state Attorney General’s Office.
Because DA Mallery’s husband is a Cobleskill Police Officer, she asked Otsego County DA John Muehl to take over her investigation.
Chief Bialkowski said Wednesday there’s no deadline for when the investigations will be finished, but as part of the process, his department has been conducting an internal review of its practices and will make changes as needed if needed.
“We’re awaiting the results just like everyone else,” he said.
The letter Mr. Kerley read appears in this week’s letters to the editor.
After Tuesday’s meeting, he questioned why two police officers appeared at the back of the room while he was reading his comments—something he took as an effort to intimidate him and suggesting they’d been called by the Village Board.
Mayor Linda Holmes said Friday she couldn’t “answer to that”; Chief Bialkowski said the same.