SEATTLE – Newly released documents concerning the death of a 14-year-old boy at the King County juvenile detention hall raise questions about how his illness was handled, a Seattle newspaper reports.
A log filed by a guard said that on Dec. 26 at 6:32 a.m., Johnny Lim used the intercom in his room to ask for help because his stomach was “acting funny.” But a report filed by a nurse said that at 6:32, she entered his room and found him on his mattress, without a pulse or breath.
Two handwriting experts told the newspaper that the guard’s log may have been doctored, and the boy’s roommate gave an account dramatically different from the guard’s. The roommate said he had been calling for help for at least 15 minutes before anyone arrived but that Lim did not call for help himself because he was retching, vomiting and wheezing on the floor.
Lim’s death will be the subject of a jury inquest scheduled for May 23, as is standard procedure when an inmate dies in custody. The King County medical examiner said the cause was a spontaneous brain stem hemorrhage.
The guard, Chima Ijeoma, told the newspaper he has been prohibited from discussing the matter with reporters.
The roommate, Ezeo Ajeto-Castro, 14, told a Seattle newspaper he called for help on the intercom three times as Lim’s condition worsened and was repeatedly told help was on the way.
“It took them forever,” he said.
By department policy, a guard is supposed to make nighttime bed checks every 20 minutes on all the youths in M-hall. But a log of those rounds indicates that the officer on duty, Ijeoma, reported nothing amiss between 6 and 6:25 a.m.
Ajeto-Castro said he believes Ijeoma simply failed to make his checks.
“Usually, they stop coming after 12, or just every now and then,” he said.
At 6:32 a.m., Ijeoma noted, “Youth pushed the call-button and requested to see the nurse because ‘My stomach is acting funny.’ “
But nurse Rene Berg walked into cell M-2 at 6:32 a.m. to find Lim “lying supine on mattress in front of bed – unresponsive.”
Timothy Nishimura, a former FBI document examiner who worked at the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory for nearly 30 years, called Ijeoma’s cell-check log “very suspicious-looking.” Reviewing a copy of the log obtained by the paper, he said it appeared to have initially been filled out to show the youths as safely in bed, but was then overwritten to record Johnny’s emergency removal to Harborview Medical Center at 6:44 a.m. A second handwriting expert who has testified in a number of court cases concurred, the newspaper said.
The boy’s death was the first at the 14-year-old detention center. Officials from the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention have offered few details about it.
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