Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset
Michael L. Garbowski
September 16, 2012 · Mahwah, Bergen County
Details as recorded
Every value below is shown exactly as Fatal Encounters recorded it.[1]
- Name as recorded
- Michael L. Garbowski
- Age as recorded
- 25
- Gender as recorded
- Male
- Race as reported
- European-American/White
- Date of the injury resulting in death
- September 16, 2012
- Location as recorded
- Mahwah, Bergen County290 Campgaw Rd. Mahwah NJ 07430 Bergen
- Highest level of force as recorded
- Drug overdose
Where the dataset places it
The marked point is the dataset's own geocoded location for this record, as recorded. Every other New Jersey record in the dataset is shown in gray. A point on a map is where a death was recorded, not a finding about anyone.
Agencies as recorded
Agency or agencies involved, as recorded: Mahwah Police Department
An agency appears here because it appears in the record's as-reported agency field, nothing more. Its presence is not a claim of fault or responsibility.
Department pages (matched by this site at high confidence)
The source's account
Fatal Encounters' description of the incident, verbatim. This is the source project's own third-party narrative, not this site's reporting.
Officers were called to a Campgaw Road home at around 10:16 p.m. by a resident who said his son was behaving erratically. When they arrived, they found the son, Michael Garbowski, locked in a bathroom. Officers heard Garbowski kicking and punching the walls inside, and he refused several commands to come out of the bathroom. Eventually, the door was forced in by Garbowski's father. Garbowski still refused to leave the bathroom, and mumbled speech that was "indiscernible." Officers eventually forced him out, handcuffed him and placed him on the floor as they waited for ambulances to arrive. While they waited, Garbowski died.
Source reported by Fatal Encounters: http://www.nj.com/bergen/index.ssf/2012/09/police_say_mahwah_man_who_died_in_police_custody_sunday_appeared_to_be_on_drugs.html (external link, as recorded in the dataset).
If you are a family member of the person named here, or represent one, and something in this record is wrong, or you want the record removed, requests go through the corrections page. Every request is checked against the source record.
This is one of 23 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2012, and one of 32 it holds for Bergen County across 2000 to 2021. Browse every New Jersey Fatal Encounters record by year.
Records from the same county and year
- Rickey L. McFadden (2012) November 25, 2012
Questions and answers
What does the Fatal Encounters dataset record about this incident?
Fatal Encounters records that Michael L. Garbowski died on September 16, 2012 in Mahwah, Bergen County, with "Drug overdose" as the highest level of force. Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced dataset of deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind; a record is not a finding of fault or misconduct.
Which agency or agencies were recorded as involved?
The record's agency field reads "Mahwah Police Department". Presence in that field means the agency appears in the record as reported, nothing more; it is not a claim of fault or responsibility by any officer or agency.
Where did this happen?
The record places the death in Mahwah, Bergen County, on September 16, 2012. The address as recorded is 290 Campgaw Rd. Mahwah NJ 07430 Bergen.
Sources
- [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 16676. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩