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.''
______________________
|
Document | Read the lawsuit
Audio | Press
conference with Attorney Stewart Grossman