Campos death fuels guilt in another client at Desert Hills

At 14, Camil Legarreta used to be too tough for cutesy baubles.

But that was before she shared her room at Desert Hills Center for Youth & Families with 15-year-old Edith Campos and her stuffed animals.

Now, Legarreta keeps stuffed animals in memory of her friend, who died two days after being restrained Feb. 2 at the facility. And she cries every time Campos' name is mentioned because she feels responsible for her death.

Sandra Legarreta, Camil's mother, said that according to her daughter, Campos was restrained after coming to Camil's rescue from psychiatric technicians restraining her.

Desert Hills spokesman Kirke Cooper declined to comment, citing patient confidentiality.

Police are investigating whether Campos died of asphyxiation. According to a police search warrant, doctors could find no apparent medical cause for her death, and she had no known pre-existing physiological conditions.

Tucson Police Department spokesman Gene Mejia said he could confirm only that Camil Legarreta has been interviewed as part of their ongoing investigation. He declined further comment.

Legarreta was at Desert Hills for about three weeks for repeatedly running away from home, her mother said.

Campos, who hadn't even been at the facility a full week, also had once run away from home. The girls immediately clicked.

According to Sandra Legarreta, this is her daughter's account of events:

A ring, which another girl in the unit reported missing, turned up in the room Camil and Edith shared.

As a result, a male psych tech told Camil she had to turn over the gifts her mother had brought her the day before, including some pants, shirts and black boots she had waited months to get.

Camil refused, and an argument ensued with the staff member. Camil closed her fist. She wanted to get control of her anger and not hit anybody. The staff member considered it a threatening move and yelled for help.

Eventually, five staff members participated in restraining her.

Camil maintained she was yelling that she could not breathe when Campos waded in to help, screaming at them and trying to pull some of them off.

Reportedly, two of the employees then turned their attentions to Campos.

``She was wrestling with them, saying: `Why are you doing this? I just wanted to help Camil because she can't breathe,' and they said: `You shut up. You're in all this, too,' '' Sandra Legarreta said.

``They were pinning her (Campos) with her face down in the floor. In all of this wrestling and all this restraining and all that, some of the people with Camil started moving over to Edith, so four of them ended up on top of Edith. Then my daughter starts screaming back, `Leave her alone.'

``Then Edith started saying, `I can't breathe.' I guess they let her take some air or something, and Camil said for a moment, she (Campos) said nothing.

``Then they said, `We'd better move her,' and they started taking her out of the room and down the hallway, and they closed the door.

``My daughter was asking where they were taking her, and they said it wasn't her business.''

Camil left Desert Hills last week and is in juvenile custody in El Paso, awaiting placement at another facility. She could not be reached for comment.

Camil Legarreta's version is different from the one in the police report. Workers told police that Campos was restrained after refusing to give up a photograph and raising her hand as if to hit the staff member.

The report speaks of only one man restraining her for about 10 minutes, although search warrants refer to four staff witnesses to the events leading up to Campos' death.

After she was helped to a sitting position, staff members could not get a pulse.

Sandra Legarreta, a YMCA clerk who is going to school to be a medical lab technician, said she knew something was wrong when a ``very nervous'' staff member called her that night at 9:30 and told her it took five staff members to restrain her daughter.

The man told her that a girl fainted when she was walking down the hallway and had to be taken to the hospital. The man never said the girl was Campos.

Sandra Legarreta met Campos two days before the restraint. ``When I met Edith, she was bruised up already (from previous restraints), but she was smiling,'' she said.

``Just a happy face, smiling. When you see my daughter, she's tougher, you see. She will show you tough from the beginning. By meeting Edith, she started liking stuffed animals again,'' she said.

Legarreta said Desert Hills never told her patients were restrained there - and she didn't even think to ask.

``It never crossed my mind because I thought that was back in another age. . . . I never thought something like that would happen inside there.''

She learned of the restraints when her daughter told her the girls in her unit were bruised from being taken down by staff.

``I believe my daughter. She's not lying,'' Legarreta said. ``When she told me the first time, she was crying, and she said that she feels very guilty. I had that feeling that I almost lost my daughter and these other parents, they lost their daughter.''

Legarreta said she decided to speak with the reporters after Desert Hills refused to give her any information.

``I need to let this in the open to see how many people will come out of the closet,'' she said.