Denver Post
How a 'calm but aggravated' teenager died on East Thrill Place
Friday, July 11, 2003 - It took Denver police just two minutes and 25 seconds to arrive at Paul Childs' house after getting word that he was threatening his mother with a knife. It took them 99 seconds after that to shoot the mentally disabled teen to death.
The killing of the 15-year-old has enraged many, raised serious questions about police procedures, and created tensions between the black community and the Police Department not seen since a rash of police shootings in the summer of 2000. Through police records and more than a dozen interviews with witnesses, neighbors and police sources, The Denver Post has reconstructed what happened Saturday afternoon. At 1 p.m. on the day Paul Childs was killed, the Childs family was sitting in the living room, recovering from a July 4 barbecue the day before. It was 94 degrees on East Thrill Place, too hot to be outdoors for long. Paul had been in an "aggravated mood" since the day before, when he tore up his room. Aside from being mentally disabled, Paul had a seizure 11 days before his death and was hospitalized. He was on three medications, although his mother later told police he may not have taken them that day. Teachers at East High and Smiley Middle schools say that Paul suffered from a degenerative eye condition. And although he still made his way comfortably through the school environment, teachers said he was legally blind. Paul spent most of his last morning silently in his sister Ashley's bedroom. He came out just after 1 p.m. and sat on the arm of the couch next to his mother, where they embraced.
"You know I love you, right?" Helen Childs recalled telling him. 
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Paul said nothing but gently covered his mother's mouth with his hand.
"What, are you going to kill me now?" Helen asked him, joking.
Then Paul got up, went into the kitchen and got a knife.
Helen was sitting at the far end of the living-room couch, next to the front door. Ashley, 16, was lying at the other end of the couch, talking with Lakisha Newell, 21, who had come to the house with her 5-year-old son to pick up her baby, whom Ashley was babysitting. Natandria Brown, the 14-year-old daughter of a family friend, also was there.
Ashley says that when her brother walked out of the kitchen with an 8-inch knife, he was "calm but aggravated." With the knife at chest level, both hands clasping the handle with the blade pointed up, Paul walked into the living room, through the hallway, into Ashley's bedroom, then out again.
Ashley remembers asking her mother, "Should I call the police to calm him down?"
They had called the police many times before. Neighbors said Paul was brought home by police "almost every other day," and his family said he collected their business cards.
About 1:10 p.m., Ashley picked up the phone and dialed 911 from the couch where she was lying. On the tape of that call, Ashley told the operator in a calm, even voice, "My brother has a knife and he's holding it up to my mom and he's really, really ... "
Interviewed about the call Wednesday, Ashley couldn't remember how she was going to finish that sentence, nor other occasions in which she appeared about to explain the situation in more detail to the operator.
Michael Thompson, Helen's brother and the family's spokesman, didn't allow Ashley to go over the 911 transcript closely with a reporter. Ashley also would not or could not explain her calm demeanor given the dramatic words she was saying.
"My brother has a knife, and he's trying to stab my mother with it," she told the 911 operator again, seconds later, in the same flat voice as before.
Lakisha Newell said later she didn't think Paul was a real threat.
"My babies were in there," Newell said Monday. "But if I was scared, I would have took my two kids out of the house."
Talking to the operator, Ashley said, "He's trying to stab her because ... " The operator cut her off.
"Thirteen years of age brother? What's his name?" the operator asked, reading from a list of questions that help police identify a suspect when they arrive at a scene.
That information - age, name, weapon information, race - was being relayed to a police dispatcher, who by 1:13 p.m. had passed it on to police officers in the area.
"Does he do this often?" the operator asked.
"No, he's just being ...," Ashley again began to explain.
"OK, that's fine," the 911 operator interrupted, and continued gathering the basic facts.
"I don't need the story. What's his weight?" Then hair color, eyes, clothing. Another question about the knife. Then back to the clothes.
Ashley interrupted, still with a calm voice. "Now he's coming after me with it."
In the background, Helen can be heard trying to soothe Paul. "I'm going to ask you nicely," she said. "Are you going to put that knife down?"
Paul then sat down in a stuffed chair in the living room and, while still holding the knife in his left hand, used his right hand to pull on his shoes, witnesses said. Helen locked the doors of the house with deadbolts, and pocketed the key.
The 911 operator was still questioning Ashley. "Has he ever done this before?"
"No, he's never. He's - he hit my mom, but he's never pulled out a knife," Ashley said.
At 1:14 p.m., the police dispatcher told officers now racing to the scene, "OK, I'm looking at a suspect in the living room after going off on mom. Apparently he has beat her up in the past, but has never pulled a weapon on her."
Meanwhile, the 911 operator asked Ashley, "What's he doing? Is he angry? Appear to be angry?"
"Yeah. And he's walking around with a knife."
"He never tried to stab her, though?"
"Never. This was the first time."
"Has he actually tried to stab her this time, or no?"
"Yeah, he's like following her around, and when she turns her back he'll try to stab her, and she'll hurry up and turn around."
At 1:16 p.m., a Denver police officer arrived at the 5500 block of East Thrill Street, followed seconds later by another officer. Neighbors saw a white unmarked police car pull up quickly to the curb two houses down from the Childses' home.
"Thirty-two, I'm six," the first officer told dispatch, identifying himself by number, then using the police code for "on scene." A woman washing dishes in her kitchen down the block saw an officer, gun drawn, run across her lawn toward the Childses' house.
The dispatcher informed arriving officers what to expect.
"I'm getting information that he's trying to stab our complainant or his mother at that location," the dispatcher told police. "Fifty-five-fifty East Thrill Place. He's very angry."
Ashley says her mother saw police coming and opened the front door for them.
"They snatched her out the door," Ashley said. "I didn't see the police, I just saw her get yanked."
Then an officer appeared in the door of the house, propping the screen door open with his left leg and pointing his pistol inside. Ashley remembers him as having dark hair and wearing black sunglasses. She said she couldn't tell if he was "Hispanic or white."
Ashley heard her mother, now outside on the front lawn, trying to explain to police what was happening.
"Please don't shoot my son," Helen recalled saying. "He's mentally challenged. He's disabled."
According to police sources, four Denver police officers were now on the scene. James Turney was propping the screen door open with his left leg. To his right was officer Todd Geddes, carrying a Taser stun gun. Behind Turney was officer Randall Krouse, also armed with a Taser. To Krouse's right was officer David Naysmith. Sgt. Timothy Towne was seconds away.
One of the officers called in the situation to dispatch. Dogs were heard barking loudly in the background.
"We've got a party with a knife."
Dispatch passed on the news to other officers en route. "OK, all cars, let's hold the airways, we've got a party with a knife."
The 911 operator asked Ashley where her brother was, and in what hand he was carrying the knife. "Does the officer have him yet?"
"No, the officer doesn't have him yet," Ashley said. Ashley later said Paul was standing behind the open front door, out of sight of the police officers, holding the knife with both hands to his chest.
One of the officers shouted, "Everyone! Get out of the house! Go out the back door!"
Those still inside started to leave through the front door because Helen had locked the back door and had the only key. Lakisha Newell left first with her 5-year-old and 10-month-old boys. Natandria Brown followed.
Ashley was still lying on the couch, looking at her brother behind the door, when police shouted into the house, "Is anyone still in the house?"
Ashley says she got up and walked to the door. As she did, she says she saw Paul coming out from behind the door. "He looked scared," Ashley said.
From the lawn, Ashley says she saw Paul walk out from behind the door, take a few steps toward police and stop.
Helen remembered one of the officers saying to Paul, "You need to drop the knife! You need to drop the knife!"
Mary Boss, who lives down the block from the Childses and was walking to her car at the time, remembered seeing Helen on the lawn. "All of the sudden you hear the mother say, 'No! Don't! Don't!"'
"Tase him," Ashley heard Geddes, the officer on the right front, say. Paul was about 4 feet inside the doorway, so close to Turney that he could have "reached out and touched" Paul, Ashley recalled. Paul was holding the knife in both hands to his chest, blade up. "He had tears in his eyes," Ashley said.
Then, four shots were fired at Paul.
"Shots fired. Ambulance code (unintelligible)," an officer called into dispatch.
"Suspect is down, 5550 East Thrill Place," said another officer seconds later.
The women on the lawn were moved across the street by a police officer. Ashley said that from there she could see the officer who shot Paul go into the house and handcuff the boy, then check Paul's pulse. The officer standing to the right of the door, Geddes, also entered the house, Ashley said.
Police interrogated the family members across the street on a neighbor's lawn, then put Ashley and Helen in separate police cars and took them to the station. The owner of that house remembered hearing one of the women say repeatedly, "I just want to go home. I just want to go home."
Witnesses say the ambulance arrived in six to eight minutes. Paul was still breathing when taken out of the house on a stretcher, they say.
"He was alive, with his head up, and he was looking around on the stretcher," said a neighbor a few doors down. "He was shirtless and had white pants on. He looked calm. He wasn't crying."
Denver Post staff writers Sean Kelly, Marcos Mocine-McQueen and Kevin Simpson and correspondent Marilyn Robinson contributed to this report.