Emergency response
Brenda Morse in hospital after being found unresponsive in hotel.
Brenda Morse, the wife of Cohoes Mayor Shawn M. Morse, was hospitalized on Tuesday morning after being found unresponsive in a hotel where she had been staying through a witness protection program.
Brenda Morse’s condition was not available, and law enforcement officials declined to provide any additional information, citing her privacy.
On a local radio show on Tuesday morning, Shawn Morse said his older daughter informed him Brenda Morse had taken “too many pills.” That information couldn’t be independently verified.
Brenda Morse’s hospitalization came a day after the mayor publicly characterized her as a “liar” suffering from substance-abuse problems, and claimed that her allegations that he has physically abused his wife and younger daughter were untrue. Shawn Morse also said he will not resign his office, rebuffing calls for him to step down from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and more than a dozen state and local elected officials.
Morse and his attorney, Joseph Ahearn, have not provided documentation that they said indicates the allega-
tions that Morse had abused his younger daughter are “unfounded.” The couple’s daughter, now 16, told Child Protective Services investigators last year that her father had choked her, pulled her hair, knocked her down and punched her during separate incidents.
“I will tell you that I have never touched a woman — I’ve never touched my wife, I’ve never touched my daughters and I’ve never touched my son,” Morse said Monday. “I will take that to the grave with me, because it’s never happened.”
Morse has accused his wife of providing copies of Child Protective Services documents to the Times Union. The newspaper obtained the documents from an independent source, although Brenda Morse, when contacted recently about the information, confirmed the reports were accurate.
On Sunday, the Times Union published a story detailing the daughter’s allegations to CPS investigators and also citing an affidavit from Brenda Morse — prepared in connection with the couple’s divorce proceeding — in which she said her husband had physically abused her throughout their 19year marriage.
Morse has also denied allegations by Colleen Keller, the mother of their son, who went public last year and said that Morse had repeatedly broken into her residence and abused her in the 1990s, including an incident in which he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground.
State Assemblyman John Mcdonald, a former Cohoes mayor, last year confirmed that he had witnessed an incident in the late 1980s when Morse allegedly dragged a woman he was dating out of Mcdonald’s family pharmacy by her hair.
Morse accused Keller, Mcdonald, his wife and his daughter of lying about the abuse allegations.
His pushback against the expanded allegations comes after Morse had provided inconsistent statements about the circumstances that led his wife to call 911 last November and tell a dispatcher that her husband grabbed her by the neck and threw her to the ground during an argument.
Morse, in an interview the day after the incident, initially said that his wife accidentally dialed 911 while trying to set up a new mobile phone. When told the Times Union had obtained a police record showing that Brenda Morse told a dispatcher she had been abused, Morse disputed the accuracy of the records and claimed his wife never alleged he had choked her.
But a copy of the recording that was released to the Times Union last week through a Freedom of Information Law request confirmed that Brenda Morse had called 911 — twice — and told a dispatcher she had been a victim of domestic violence.
“We got into a fight and he — I have cuts on me because he pulled me by my throat to the ground because I went to grab my daughter’s cellphone,” Brenda Morse told a dispatcher before the call disconnected.
Morse also claimed last year that he had no scratches on his face the day after the incident, although a scratch was visible under his left eye at a public event the next day. Police officials in Cohoes confirmed their officers also took note of the scratch when they went to the residence in response to the 911 calls.
The Albany County district attorney’s office is overseeing the ongoing investigation of Morse, which began last November.
Last week, Colonie police opened a new investigation of Morse after his wife filed a complaint alleging that he assaulted her — bruising her right arm and left shoulder and spitting in her face — when they met at a Wolf Road restaurant late Thursday morning to discuss the terms of their separation.
Cohoes police Assistant Chief Thomas Ross said on Tuesday that they were aware of the Child Protective Services investigation when that agency requested all police reports related to the Morse family last August. But Ross said the department was never briefed on the details of the investigation.
The Times Union, citing a confidential source, had reported Sunday that a Cohoes High School teacher accompanied Morse’s younger daughter to the Cohoes police station last year to file a report on her alleged abuse. But Ross said that information is inaccurate and the department has no record of it. He said the teacher, who records show did accompany the daughter on her interviews with Child Protective Services investigators, had confirmed she did not go directly to police.
“If there is an indicated criminal matter — say physical abuse or sex abuse or any of that stuff — that would be sent to the State Police or sheriff’s department (by CPS),” Ross said. “It would not be sent back to the police department that’s working for the guy.”
The Child Protective Services reports, filed by investigators in Rensselaer County because of Shawn Morse’s political ties in Albany County, detail allegations that he regularly used physical violence against his younger daughter. During at least one of the interviews, Morse’s daughter was accompanied by a math teacher from Cohoes High School. That interview took place March 24, 2017, at the Cohoes Public Library, according to the report.
During the interview, a CPS investigator wrote in a report that the daughter — whose name is being withheld by the Times Union — recounted how a few days earlier her father allegedly attacked her unprovoked at the family’s home following a heated argument he had with his wife in the middle of the night, the document states.
“(Child) said she pulled covers over her head and (father) was pulling the covers off and punching her in the side of the head,” the report states. “(Child) said she was fighting and kicking (father) . ... (Child) said she got up to go to her room and put clothes on to leave. (Child) said (father) followed and was standing kind of on the side of her and he grabbed her with both hands and started to choke her. (Child) said (father) was saying ‘I’ll kill you right now ... who are you talking to me like that.’ (Child) said (father) was holding her throat for about 5 seconds and said he saw that she couldn’t breathe and started crying so he let go.”