has prevented much interest in the fact that most police departments have banned or discouraged that kind of restraint because it kills people - even
people without developmental disabilities.
Marta
>Subject: Death of Autistic Man Questioned
>
>DEATH OF AUTISTIC MAN QUESTIONED (TENNESSEE)
>by Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
>
>May 4, 2000
>
>Nashville, TN -- Even as more details were released regarding the Sunday
>afternoon death of Calvin Champion Jr. in a Nashville department store
>parking lot, those who knew him are puzzled as to how and why it could
>have happened.
>
>"Nobody has any answers," his father told Nashville Tennessean of his
>son, who had autism and mental retardation.
>
>Questions remain as to why Champion's care provider, who had her
>three-year-old child with her, put Champion outside her van, and then
>called police, and why she refrained from informing police that he had
>autism and difficulty communicating until after his death.
>
>Authorities are also trying to determine why police pepper-sprayed
>Champion twice, hand-cuffed him, tied his ankles together and left the
>overweight man face-down on the pavement until he began vomiting.
>
>Champion lost consciousness at the scene and was declared dead when he
>arrived at a nearby hospital.
>
>
>More details are available from yesterday's Tennessean:
>http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/05/03/champion03.shtml
>
>Dave Reynolds, Editor
>Inclusion Daily Express
>News at inclusiondaily.com
>http://www.inclusiondaily.com
>
-- Marta Russell author Los Angeles, CA Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html