The Denver Post
Childs' mom takes the stand
Saturday, October 23, 2004 -
Helen Childs sat quietly in a corner booth at a Denny's restaurant Friday, eating chicken-fried steak, when the waitress approached to clear plates.
"What do your buttons say?" the young woman asked. She was referring to the four buttons Childs wore that read: "Operation Get Turney. No Immunity for Killer Cops." As Childs began to tell the waitress about her son, 15-year-old Paul Childs, whom Denver police officer James Turney shot dead on July 5, 2003, the waitress' expression grew sad, but Childs' voice gained strength. She was happy to be able to tell her story to someone. Childs had been waiting for this day for months, and, sitting there eating lunch, she was at once nervous and eager. On Friday, she saw Turney for the first time since he shot her son. After lunch, she would take the witness stand at Turney's disciplinary appeals hearing in Denver to tell her side. At last, she said, she hoped to be able to speak her peace in a place where she knew he had to hear her. "I just want to ask him why did he shoot my son," she said. Paul Childs was a developmentally disabled boy who suffered from seizures, often ran away from home on mini-adventures, loved playing with his dog and calling his uncle on the phone - and one day picked up a large kitchen knife in the family's north Park Hill home and refused to drop it when police told him to. His family had called police in the hopes they could calm him down, as officers had done before. But Turney soon found himself within a couple of feet of the knife-wielding boy. Fearing for his life, Turney said, he fired. The officer received a 10-month suspension without pay for alleged procedural mistakes but was not charged. Turney has appealed the suspension, and Friday's hearing was the fourth day of testimony before a judge to determine whether the penalty should be reduced. What has become clear at the appeals hearing thus far is that there is no definitive view of what happened that day. Witnesses heard different things, saw different actions. Helen Childs had watched earlier portions of the hearing on the television news. "Lies," she said during lunch. When she finally took the witness stand about 2 p.m. Friday, lawyers began questioning her in detail, steering her story. What was her son like? What happened on July 5? What was she thinking when he grabbed the knife? Why wasn't she afraid? Her answers were often so quiet the stenographer couldn't hear her. Sometimes, the questions were repetitive. The past 15 months have been full of change for Helen Childs. Her daughter, Ashley, now has a 10-month-old boy. Helen won a $1.3 million legal settlement from Denver for the shooting. Next month, she and Ashley will move into a brand-new home. But there are times when it feels like July 5 again for Helen, that no time has passed at all. Four hours after Childs took the stand Friday, the hearing ended for the day when a lawyer asked her the obvious, whether she'd been traumatized by the shooting. "Different things will trigger it," she said in a tearful mumble, "and it will all come back to me. It is so hard. It is so hard." Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 303-655-7735 or jingold@denverpost.com .
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