Cops Kill Man with Down Syndrome
Over Movie Ticket, Blame it on Medics Who Tried to Save His Life
By Jay Syrmopoulos on September
2, 2015
The three cops facing a
wrongful-death suit in connection with the death of a man with Down syndrome
will argue that his death was the result of pre-existing medical conditions,
according to filings with the U.S. District Court.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one
before.
Police approach an individual
regarding an extremely trivial matter. When the he doesn’t immediately comply
with the commands of law enforcement he’s taken to the ground and roughed up by
numerous cops. In the course of the altercation, the man dies from
asphyxiation.
Although this sounds very similar
to the manner in which Eric Garner was killed by NYPD cops after an altercation
about selling single cigarettes, this is actually thecase of Ethan Saylor.
Saylor, a 26-year-old with Down
syndrome, was at a movie theater with a health care aide watching “Zero Dark
Thirty.” The movie had finished, but Ethan didn’t want to leave the theater
after the film ended, hoping to watch it again.
The cinema manager, angry that
the mentally-handicapped man didn’t quite understand that one ticket is only
good for one viewing, called three off-duty-deputies who were moonlighting as
security guards. The cops decided to forcibly evict Saylor from the theater,
refusing to listen to his aide, who had already contacted Saylor’s mother in an
effort to defuse the situation.
Instead, as is all too common the
case, the cops got violent, taking Saylor to the ground and piling on top of
him as they attempted to handcuff him. In the process, this young man’s trachea
was fractured, and he died of asphyxiation.
The autopsy report indicated that
Saylor died from asphyxiation, and had sustained a fracture to his larynx, with
the coroner listing his cause of death as homicide.
While Saylor’s death was ruled a
homicide, an internal “investigation” cleared the three officers, Lt. Scott
Jewell, Sgt. Rich Rochford and Deputy First Class James Harris, of any
wrongdoing. No charges were brought against any of the officers involved in his
death.
Much to the dismay of almost
everyone involved in the case, a Frederick County grand jury declined to indict
the deputies after their review of the case.
After the failure of the state to
hold these officers criminally accountable for Saylor death, as is often the
case when law enforcement kills a citizen, the family filed a wrongful-death
suit against the deputies.
According to a report in The
Frederick News Post:
In the initial complaint, filed
in October 2013, Saylor’s family alleged violations of his civil rights and of
the Americans with Disabilities Act by the state, county sheriff’s deputies and
the companies that employed the men as security guards at the Regal Cinemas
Westview Stadium 16 theater.
A year later, a federal judge
dismissed all of the claims against the theater company, and also dismissed a
simple negligence claim against the deputies and a wrongful-death claim against
the state.
Claims that the deputies —
Richard Rochford, Scott Jewell and James Harris — were grossly negligent and
that the state failed to train them were allowed to go forward.
While the family is certain that
the fractured larynx was a result of the violent altercation, defense attorneys
for the cops claimed in their latest court filings that the injuries found on
Saylor were from the paramedic’s efforts to save his life, and not their brutal
attack.
One of the experts identified by
the defense was Dr. Jeffrey Fillmore, the emergency department physician who
treated Saylor at Frederick Memorial Hospital. According to court filing by the
defense, Fillmore would testify that the autopsy and other evidence are not
consistent with asphyxia as the cause of Saylor’s death.
On Tuesday, attorney for Saylor’s
family, Joseph Espo, told the AP that his expert witnesses disagree with almost
everything in the filing by the deputies’ attorneys. Records indicate that
those witnesses include a disabilities expert, a police liabilities expert, a
pathologist and another medical doctor.
Perhaps one of the most
heartbreaking aspects of this case is the fact that Saylor was an avid fan of
law enforcement and was reportedly fascinated by police. Some may argue that
the cops did not intend to kill Ethan, but the fact that they couldn’t
de-escalate a simple situation over a movie ticket, and instead resorted to
deadly violence speaks to the corrupting sickness that is prevalent in policing
today.
________________________________________
Jay Syrmopoulos is an
investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of
authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver
pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on
BenSwann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, AlterNet, InfoWars, MintPressNews and
many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at
Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.
Hi! John Faust here...yep, I'm a weasel....but I just to say I sure as heck glad we don't have cops in Fairfax County murdering innocent people........
John Faust: Pretending bad thing don't happen for the past 4 years
