Teen Restrained By Miami Police Dies at Hospital While in Coma

January 7, 2007

MIAMI (AP) -- An autistic teenager who had been in a coma since a confrontation last month with city police officers has died. Kevin Colindres, 18, died Friday. He had been hospitalized in a coma since officers restrained his hands and feet following an outburst at his Miami home Dec. 12.

His parents' attorney initially claimed the officers hogtied Colindres and applied pressure to his back and shoulders outside the teen's home. A lawsuit filed last month claims those actions caused the teen to stop breathing and left him comatose.

Stuart Grossman, who represents the parents, said Friday the teen had not been hogtied, with his ankle restraints looped through his handcuffs, but maintained the officers pinned Colindres to the ground and held his ankles in the air, cutting off his breathing.

"It's obvious from the extent of his brain damage that he had been asphyxiated by the police for quite some time," Grossman said.

Police Chief John Timoney told The Miami Herald on Friday the officers restrained Colindres appropriately. They never put their weight on the teen, but were calming him as he lay on the ground, Timoney said.

"The city of Miami Police Department wishes to express its deepest condolences to the Colindres family. We are conducting a very extensive and thorough investigation into this matter," Detective Delrish Moss said in a statement. An autopsy was pending.

As the family had done three times before, Colindres' sister called police around 7 p.m. on Dec. 12, after the teenager became combative with his mother and other family members. When a female officer arrived at the Colindres home minutes later, she found Colindres calm and sitting on a couch, according to police.

Police have said Colindres tried to run away after a sister insisted the teen be taken to a crisis treatment center. However, the lawsuit claims police threw the teen down when he started to stand.

"It looks like he got his foot caught in the base of the couch, goes flat down and smacks his head on the ground," Timoney said Friday.

Grossman said he would review Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue dispatch recordings officers made after noticing blood behind Colindres' ear.

The police department's internal affairs office will investigate Colindres' death.

_________________

Comatose autistic teen dies weeks after police conflict

Jan. 6, 2007, 2:28PM

Associated Press

MIAMI — An autistic teenager who had been in a coma since a confrontation with police officers last month has died.

Kevin Colindres, 18, died Friday. He had been hospitalized since officers were called to his home after he had an outburst.

Stuart Grossman, who represents the parents in a lawsuit against the city, said Friday the officers pinned Colindres to the ground and held his ankles in the air, cutting off his breathing. The lawsuit claims the officers' actions caused the teen to stop breathing and left him comatose.

"It's obvious from the extent of his brain damage that he had been asphyxiated by the police for quite some time," Grossman said.

An autopsy was pending.

As the family had done three times before, Colindres' sister called police Dec. 12, after the teenager became combative with family members. When an officer arrived minutes later, she found Colindres calm and sitting on a couch, according to police.

Police have said Colindres tried to run away after a sister insisted he be taken to a crisis treatment center. The lawsuit claims police threw the teen down when he started to stand.

"It looks like he got his foot caught in the base of the couch, goes flat down and smacks his head on the ground," Chief John Timoney said Friday.

Timoney said the officers restrained Colindres appropriately. They never put their weight on him, and were calming him as he lay on the ground, Timoney said.

________________

Autistic teen restrained by police dies at hospital while in coma

January 5, 2007
By David Ovalle

(More articles below)

A teenager left in a coma after an encounter with Miami police died Friday, as department officials concluded that officers did nothing wrong in handling the autistic youth.

Kevin Colindres, 18, had been in a coma since he was restrained by the hands and feet by officers following an outburst at his Miami home on Dec. 12.

His family's attorney initially said Colindres had been ''hogtied,'' his hands cuffed behind the back, a strap running from his ankles looped through the cuffs, tight enough to stop his breathing.

But the attorney, Stuart Grossman, admitted Friday that the ankle restraint was not looped through the teen's handcuffs -- the definition of a hogtie.

Grossman maintained that officers still cut off Colindres' breathing by holding his restrained ankles in the air as the teen lay face down. ''It's obvious from the extent of his brain damage that he had been asphyxiated by the police for quite some time,'' Grossman said.

An autopsy will determine exactly how Colindres died.

''The city of Miami Police Department wishes to express its deepest condolences to the Colindres family. We are conducting a very extensive and thorough investigation into this matter,'' Miami Detective Delrish Moss said in a statement.

In a meeting with Miami Herald editors Friday, scheduled before Colindres died, Miami Police Chief John Timoney and his top staffers said the internal affairs bureau's investigation determined that officers on the scene acted properly in dealing with the teenager.

He also provided a timeline of dispatched calls that rebut some assertions originally presented by Colindres' family, among them that officers waited too long to call paramedics.

The Colindres family is suing the department.

Officers had responded to the house at least once in February, calming Colindres without committing him to the hospital, police said.

The last encounter started Dec. 12 when Colindres' sister called 911 at 6:46 p.m. to report that her brother had hit her mother and was ''very violent,'' according to a recording played by police.

Miami Officer Kimberly Pyle arrived at 7:02 p.m. and began taking preliminary information from the family.

Six minutes later, she radioed a dispatcher: ``Get another unit here.''

A brief snippet of what investigators believe is Colindres yelling in the background can be heard.

At 7:11 p.m., three backup officers arrived and went inside with Pyle, according to the police timeline. Colindres soon calmed down.

His mother had bruises to her face and a shallow cut to the neck, Timoney said.

After Colindres' sister insisted her brother be taken to a crisis treatment center, Colindres stood up and tried to run away, police said.

''It looks like he got his foot caught in the base of the couch, goes flat down and smacks his head on the ground,'' Timoney said.

In the lawsuit against the department, Grossman claims officers threw Colindres to the ground.

Officers handcuffed the teen. Then they noticed Colindres had blood behind his ear and called Miami Fire-Rescue at 7:15 p.m., dispatch recordings show.

Grossman said he will review the dispatch calls. In earlier interviews, the family maintained that officers initially refused to call paramedics, waiting about 10 minutes until after Colindres' father arrived.

The officers led Colindres outside to put him in the back of a patrol car. He struggled again and eventually ended up face down and kicking, police said.

After an officer tired of holding his kicking legs, officers used a nylon device known as a ''hobble restraint'' on his ankles to keep him from thrashing, police said.

Pyle called the dispatcher at 7:25 p.m. to ask when paramedics would arrive. She was told three minutes.

The officer told internal affairs investigators that at that time the teen's father, Melvin Colindres, arrived on the scene.

Colindres placed a towel under his son's chin, spoke with him and noticed he was bleeding. In the next few moments, Timoney said, the teen ''clearly took a turn for the worse'' and became unresponsive.

Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue arrived at about 7:30 p.m.

The Colindres family and their attorney say officers pinned Colindres to the ground and held his ankles in the air, cutting off his breathing.

But Timoney said the officers -- two of whom had just arrived to relieve other officers -- never put their weight on the teen but were calming him as he lay on the ground.

He said an independent witness, a neighbor whom he did not identify, corroborates that.

The internal affairs office will handle the death investigation. Their final report on the officers' encounter with the teen is pending.

Upset at what he described as an unfair article and editorial, Timoney had asked to meet with newspaper editors to discuss the internal affairs findings.

It was scheduled for 3 p.m. Friday.

At about the same time, Colindres died at Coral Gables Hospital.

________________________ 

City sued over restrained teen's coma

Miami police disputed the use of a controversial restraint on a disabled teen as the man's parents filed a lawsuit, which says the restraint caused `irreparable brain damage.'

December 19, 2006
By Carol Marbin Miller

The parents of a disabled teen who stopped breathing after Miami police restrained him earlier this month filed suit against the city of Miami on Monday, claiming police ''hogtied'' their son outside their home, then put pressure on his back and shoulders.

Both practices -- hogtying and applying pressure -- can cause people to stop breathing, the suit claims.

But Police Chief John Timoney, speaking for the first time about the incident, vigorously denied officers had used the controversial restraint on Kevin Colindres, 18, who was left in a coma.

''At no time was Kevin hogtied,'' Timoney told reporters during a news conference Monday. He did not address whether officers had applied pressure to Colindres' body.

Timoney, flanked by two assistants, expressed sympathy to Kevin's family, which witnessed the Dec. 12 incident.

''We want to offer our deepest sympathy and prayers to the whole family, the Colindreses and young Kevin, who is in the hospital on life support,'' Timoney said. ``Our prayers go out to him and his family. This is, indeed, a tragic incident.''

The police department has refused to release its report on the encounter to The Miami Herald, and Timoney declined to answer questions from the media. The department has launched an Internal Affairs investigation, which is not expected to be complete for several days, Timoney said.

Kevin Colindres, who suffers from severe autism, became combative with his mother and other family members shortly before 7 p.m. Dec. 12, prompting a sister to call police. It was the third time the Colindres family had turned to Miami police for help when Kevin had become aggressive.

The first officer, a woman, arrived at the Colindres' Flagami home at 7:02, Timoney said. In several respects, his version of that night's events differs markedly from the description given by Kevin's father, Melvin Colindres, to The Miami Herald last week.

Timoney acknowledged that Kevin had calmed down, and was sitting on a couch with his mother, by the time the first officer arrived. But one of Kevin's sisters insisted Kevin be taken to a crisis center to be stabilized, Timoney said, and the officer requested backup. When other officers arrived, Kevin bolted from the couch and slipped on the floor, Timoney said. The Colindreses' suit says officers grabbed Kevin and threw him to the floor when he started to rise from the couch.

Later, Kevin was sitting on a sidewalk, handcuffed, waiting for paramedics who had been called to examine him after the fall, Timoney said, when he became agitated again. While an officer held the teen's ankles, another officer retrieved an ankle restraint device, called a ''hobble,'' which was used to tie the teen's feet together.

The device was necessary, Timoney said, to stop Kevin from ``flailing and kicking.''

Timoney denied the family's contention that officers waited 10 minutes before calling paramedics after Kevin had stopped breathing. An ambulance arrived at 7:30, he said. A Crisis Intervention Team officer, specially trained to deal with people with mental illness or disabilities, did not arrive until after Kevin had been restrained.

''We tried as much as possible to humanely restrain Kevin,'' Timoney said.

But Melvin Colindres, who arrived home from his chef job after Kevin already was restrained, and the family's attorney, Stuart Grossman, offered a darker description of events that night, saying officers exercised no care in dealing with a teen whose neurological disorder left him with the intellect of a 4-year-old.

Said Grossman: ``The people who needed to be restrained that night were the city police officers. That's the sad thing about it.''

In their lawsuit, which names the city of Miami and Timoney individually, parents Melvin and Alma Colindres called the officers -- for whom Timoney provided only surnames -- ``belligerent and confrontational.''

Colindres and Grossman have insisted that Kevin was hogtied by officers, who then put their weight on his back, shoulders and legs. In an interview last week, Colindres said police for 10 minutes ignored his demand to call an ambulance after it appeared Kevin had stopped breathing.

According to the lawsuit, many police departments have banned hogtie-type restraints, which can cause brain damage and death when detainees are deprived of oxygen for prolonged periods.

Fighting back tears, Melvin Colindres said doctors have offered little reason for optimism about Kevin's chances. The father said Kevin is in a persistent vegetative state.

''Kevin is in a coma. His organs are deteriorating as we speak,'' Colindres told reporters at Grossman's Coconut Grove office Monday afternoon.

''Kevin can recover; that's our hope,'' Colindres said. But, a moment later, he added: ``I thought hope is something you never lose. But the doctors have just told me there is no hope.''

______________________ 

REFERRALS: CAICA is not a referral agency. CAICA does not refer to or promote facilities or transport companies for children or teens. CAICA warns parents that the parent pay / parent choice programs ie. Residential Treatment Centers, Therapeutic Boarding Schools, Behavior Modification Programs, Christian Programs, Positive Peer Culture Programs, etc., are not regulated by the Federal Government and that it is a "Buyer Beware" industry. CAICA provides the following for parents: Message to Parents, Help for Distraught and Desperate Parents, and Questions to Ask and Warning Signs.

© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008