For Grateful Dead Fan, It Was a Final Concert : Investigations: College sophomore died in police custody. Officials are trying to figure out what went wrong.

As a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara, Patrick Shanahan loved to blast his stereo system with records of Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and his favorite group, the Grateful Dead. He often grumbled when the dormitory adviser asked him to turn it down, his friend Robert Jarrett recalled Friday.

It was Shanahan’s loyalty to the Dead that drew him and Jarrett to the group’s concert on Dec. 10 at the Forum in Inglewood. It was there, after seeing his 24th Grateful Dead performance, that Shanahan died in the custody of Inglewood police.

On Thursday, an autopsy disclosed that the 19-year-old Fountain Valley youth died from neck injuries suffered as he struggled with officers. Inglewood police had acknowledged in a police report that they used a chokehold to control Shanahan; the family’s lawyer, Lawrence Trygstad, accused the police Friday of using “excessive force.”

The case is under investigation by police and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Jarrett described Shanahan as a teen-ager disillusioned with the pollution and hubbub of Southern California. He had recently learned to surf and talked of changing his UC Santa Barbara college major from business to forestry.

While a police report released Friday depicted Shanahan as struggling so hard that officers had to use a chokehold to subdue him, Jarrett and others who knew the Grateful Dead fan described him as simply a good-hearted achiever who questioned authority.

“I watched him grow up and he called me Uncle Joe,” said Joseph Panarese, a teacher at Goffstown High School in New Hampshire, which Shanahan attended before transferring to Fountain Valley High School. “He was the typical All-American teen-ager. He was was very bright, he did well in school and he enjoyed life.”

Mike Kasler, principal of Fountain Valley High, said Shanahan was a B-plus student who excelled in languages and competed on the school wrestling team for two years. He graduated with honors in 1988 after attending the school for three years.

“It is such a tragedy for someone so young and with so much potential to die like that,” Kasler said. “We feel for the family. It’s a shame. It’s a tragedy.”

Jarrett, whose mother lives in Pomona, said he spent the night at the Shanahan home in Fountain Valley the night before the concert and remembers staying up late that night, talking with Shanahan and his parents about what the two teen-agers were going to do with their lives.

The next day, Jarrett said, he and Shanahan arrived at the Forum several hours before the concert began. They shopped for Christmas presents at makeshift booths set up by Grateful Dead fans in the parking lot across the street from the Forum.

Once the concert started, they spent the first hour together, Jarrett said. But then they became separated. When Shanahan returned from intermission, Jarrett said, he appeared “worried, bugged out.” Jarrett said he did not suspect at the time that Shanahan might have taken drugs.

As they danced in an aisle during the second half of the concert, Shanahan suddenly walked away from his friend without explanation. Jarrett followed. Shanahan first headed down toward the stage, then turned and headed up the aisle toward an exit, Jarrett said.

Shanahan pushed Jarrett away from him at one point, Jarrett said, unresponsive to his friend’s questions about what was wrong.

“He was waving his hands,” Jarrett said. “He didn’t say anything. I thought he was mad at me and that he wanted to be on his own.”

Shanahan, dressed in a tie-dyed shirt, jeans and white tennis shoes, walked off. The two friends did not see each other again.

A police report of the incident said an officer on patrol after the concert spotted Shanahan standing rigid with a blank stare on his face. He did not respond to questions and suddenly dropped to his knees, yelling and laughing to himself, the officer reported.

When Shanahan resisted the officer’s efforts to handcuff him, police said, backup officers were called.

After the officers wrestled Shanahan to the ground, police said, he broke free. One of the officers then “placed him in a carotid control hold,” or chokehold, the police report says.

Shanahan continued to struggle as three officers lay on top of him and others put on leg restraints. He stopped struggling but continued yelling, the report said. It was when police were en route to the police station--with Shanahan in the back seat--that they noticed he had stopped breathing.

They changed course and took him to nearby Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital, where he was declared dead.

The autopsy report released Thursday said Shanahan died from “compression of the neck during restraint.” Contributing factors in the death were listed as “multiple injuries and acute LSD intoxication.”

Shanahan’s family was en route to Orange County on Friday from New Hampshire, where they had buried Shanahan the week before. They have hired attorney Trygstad and pathologist Irving Root to sort out the details.

Trygstad said his investigation showed that Shanahan’s trachea had reportedly been crushed during the arrest.

Trygstad said he has spoken to about 20 witnesses to the arrest, many of whom called him after reading a flyer distributed at a series of Grateful Dead concerts in Oakland by an area resident concerned about the death.

Inglewood police refused to comment on the matter Friday, but the department previously has denied using excessive force against Shanahan. Detectives are investigating Shanahan’s death, while internal investigators look at the police response.

In 1982, the Los Angeles Police Department banned the use of carotid control holds because authorities were concerned about the possibility of injuries resulting from them.