Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 11, 1993 TAG: 9305110270
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Eric Scott Lee died from asphyxiation, said Dr. David Oxley, deputy chief medical examiner for Western Virginia.
In a news conference, Police Chief David Hooper said Sgt. R.L. Hague and officers S.F. O'Neill and J.M. Donaldson - who grabbed Lee by the neck to pull him off O'Neill - will be placed on administrative duties until an investigation is completed.
Police had responded to a report of an assault at 114 Ninth St. S.E. around 7 a.m., Hooper said.
When Hague arrived, he found Rhonda Caldwell outside. Lee was with his girlfriend, Kim Gunter, inside her house. O'Neill and Donaldson quickly arrived, approached Lee and tried to arrest him.
Lee, at 6 feet 3 inches tall and 190 pounds, tried to get by Hague, then grabbed O'Neill by the throat and began choking him, Hooper said.
Donaldson and Hague joined in the struggle. The four collapsed on the floor, wrestling for several minutes.
Lee, whose hold was causing O'Neill to black out, finally was subdued after Donaldson grabbed him from behind and around the neck with his arm - "You could call it a choke hold," Hooper said - and dragged him off.
Lee was left handcuffed in a fetal position for three to four minutes before officers realized he wasn't breathing, Hooper said. Efforts to revive him at the scene and at Roanoke Memorial Hospital failed. He was pronounced dead shortly after 8 a.m.
O'Neill was treated for bruises and minor injuries.
Caldwell, who said she was in the apartment during the disturbance, disputed the police version of how long the choke hold was applied. She estimated that Lee was choked for several minutes.
"His face was purple," she said. "His lips were blue."
"Don't hurt him," she said she pleaded with one of the officers.
A neighbor, Randy Sawtell, said he heard someone pleading with police, "Don't hurt him."
"They said it twice," he said.
Jeremy Lockhart, another neighbor, said he'd heard fighting in the house throughout the night. It intensified when police came.
"It sounded like everybody was bouncing off the walls," he said.
Hooper said he had no reason to believe that excessive force was used in subduing Lee, and that use of the hold is not necessarily a violation of departmental procedure.
But he said the hold is not part of police training.
"We don't teach choke holds," Hooper said. But "it's just sort of a natural thing to do" in a violent situation.
"Under the conditions that they were in at the time," Hooper said, "I wouldn't second-guess."
"Anything you're not taught to use, you don't use," said police Maj. J.L. Viar, but "anything goes out the window when your life's in danger."
"You never know who's going to react that way to the hold," Oxley said.
In the hold, the arm cuts off both major arteries in the neck and the air passageway and slows the heart, Oxley said. The combination of the three can cause death - in some cases, in 10 seconds.
Hooper said there was no evidence that weapons were involved, or that Lee had been drinking before the struggle.
Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell said police briefed him about the incident Monday morning, but he is withholding judgment until an investigation is completed.
Caldwell said he expects it to take at least a week before police turn over their internal investigation to his office.
After reviewing the case, Caldwell can decide whether the use of force was justified, or let a grand jury decide.
The decision to place Donaldson, O'Neill and Hague on administrative duty is "pretty standard," Hooper said.
"It's not a finding of guilt," Viar said, but a way of benefiting each man "until you can learn what effect it has on the officer."
"You don't suspend," he said.
Hague, the most experienced of the three officers, has been with the department seven years. O'Neill has two years' experience and Donaldson has three.
Hooper said none of the three has "a propensity for violence," but he would not discuss their personnel records.
Hooper said he could not recall any similar incidents in which a suspect may have died at the hands of city police officers.
In three incidents since 1989, Roanoke police have shot and killed armed suspects who made threatening actions.
In February 1989, Robert Stephen Moran was killed outside a Roanoke nightspot after he grabbed a police officer's service revolver and fired at least one shot during a struggle. Commonwealth's Attorney Caldwell ruling the shooting was justified.
In December 1989, Larry Houchins Williams was shot to death after he opened a motel door and pointed a pistol at a police officer who was responding to reports of gunshots in the parking lot. The officer - who had killed another man under similar circumstances in the mid-1980s - was justified in using deadly force, Caldwell decided.
In March 1991, Leonard A. Morris was shot nine times in his Arbutus Avenue home after he stabbed one officer and charged two others. Police had gone to Morris' home because he was a suspect in a stabbing and sexual assault.
In separate investigations, both Caldwell and the U.S. Justice Department determined that the police did not use excessive force.
Police conducted their own investigation of each incident, clearing the officer of any wrongdoing, before passing the case to Caldwell or federal authorities.
Staff writers Ron Brown and Laurence Hammack contributed information to this story.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB