Denver Post

Teen's death shows police not prepared
By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist

Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - The Denver Police Department didn't murder a developmentally disabled 15-year-old city resident with a seizure disorder. But investigators better dig deep into the police shooting of Paul Childs, because witness accounts and expert interviews suggest a life lost to a misunderstood medical condition.

And one thing seems certain: Denver police must overhaul their training and policies for dealing with the mentally disabled.

The question on which this tragedy turns is whether Childs was preparing to hurt his mother or police Saturday. Childs' 16-year-old sister, Ashley, called 911 Saturday to ask police to help because "my brother has a knife, and he's trying to stab my mother with it."

But twice, when Ashley tried to elaborate on her brother's situation, the dispatcher cut her off, a 911 tape shows.

Whether Paul was still suffering the aftereffects of a seizure for which he had been hospitalized several days earlier will never be known.

An autopsy can't answer the question. What might have answered it, medical experts said, was patience.

At the time of his death, Childs showed all the symptoms of a person recovering from a seizure, said Dr. Mark Spitz, a professor of neurology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Childs talked when he first left the hospital, then stopped, family members said. The East High School student trashed his room Friday night. Saturday, he began to carry a kitchen knife clutched upright to his chest.

Seizures, which are electrical firestorms in the brain, may only last a few minutes, Spitz explained. But recovery can last for days.

In 1998, Spitz published a study on the violent behavior of people recovering from seizures. In a pool of 1,300 seizure patients, he found only six who showed aggressive behavior. "These behaviors," Spitz wrote in the journal Neurology, "are usually brief and undirected, and occur during a well-meaning attempt to restrain the patient. If left alone, the behaviors often cease immediately ..."

"After a seizure, you're confused, not responding," Spitz said Monday. "As part of that you might do things that seem aggressive."

Given space and time, people recovering from seizures are usually not dangerous, Spitz found.

"They are more of a danger to themselves than to others," agreed Dr. Richard Hughes, chief of neurology at Denver Health Medical Center.

In his research, Spitz discovered patients who cursed at anyone who approached them in the days after a seizure. Spitz even found a couple of patients who carried knives. That included one who held the knife to his mother's throat but didn't cut her.

Seizure victims often don't remember this behavior once they have fully recovered, Spitz said.

Childs did nothing so aggressive. He never threatened anyone with the knife, his family said. He simply wouldn't put it down.

His sister called the police hoping officers could talk him into giving up the knife. Childs liked the police, Ashley said, because they often helped him find his way home when he wandered off from his home in northeast Denver.

Only this time, the cops arrived with drawn guns, according to Childs' mother and aunt.

"I told them, 'He's a special-needs child. Just talk to him and get the knife away,"' said the mother, Helen Childs.

Instead, she said, an officer shot her son to death when he wouldn't drop the knife.

Catherine Clayton, executive director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Colorado, said better training might have shown police that it didn't have to go that way.

"I've been in hostile situations like that," Clayton said. "You stand back and wait for the person to calm down."

Touching someone or yelling at someone who is recovering from a seizure "might elicit a fear response," Hughes said.

"The idea to touch them is not great," he added. "You can't improve on the time it takes the brain to reboot."

Basically, Spitz explained, "you wait them out. Just watch and observe."

That didn't happen with Paul Childs. His mom hopes the legislature will pass a law called Paul's Law that would require training for police to handle cases of people with seizure disorders and developmental disabilities.

That's a good idea and a noble gesture from a grieving mother and the least the state could do. The most might be to turn the case over to independent investigators and let the chips fall as they will.

But even an indictment won't bring back Paul Childs. He was a gentle soul who was the apparent victim of poor police preparation.

What happens because of his death will say plenty about future relations between Denver's officers and the citizens they serve.

At this point, that means a tough investigation and perhaps sanctions. But to avoid another crisis, the police need to heed the title of a videotape Spitz developed to help street cops learn about seizure disorders.

It's called "Take a Second Look."

Jim Spencer's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in The Denver Post.