Pubdate: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 Source: Topeka Capital-Journal (KS) Copyright: 2000 The Topeka Capital-Journal Contact: 616 S.E. Jefferson, Topeka, Kansas 66607 Website: http://cjonline.com/ Author: KEVIN BATES MOTHER'S LOSS SPURS CHANGES IN LAW Almost six years after her son's death, a Topeka woman feels as if she finally has put him to rest. "At first, and probably for a long time, people thought I was just a ranting, raving, grieving mother," Sara Born said. "This became my life. This is what I ate and breathed for five years. But now I realize that I need to learn to let go and heal." Born's son Chad Cantor died May 14, 1994. He had driven to a convenience store in Mullins, S.C., where he lived, and told the clerk he needed police assistance. But when officers arrived, Cantor appeared to be "confused and disoriented" and wouldn't exit his pickup truck, according to police reports. Officers sprayed pepper spray into the truck's cab after breaking a small vent window, reports indicated. Cantor then exited his vehicle and ran down the street. A videotape recorder mounted inside a patrol car captured part of the incident, but Born said her son ran outside the camera's view, where he was caught by six officers from the Mullins Police Department, Marion County Sheriff's Department and the South Carolina Highway Patrol. Cantor, 23, who was 6 feet tall and weighed a well-muscled 230 pounds, reportedly struggled with officers, who handcuffed him and held him to the ground. Police reports indicate that officers then turned him over and noticed he wasn't breathing. Emergency personnel responded but failed to resuscitate Cantor. An autopsy report, noting methamphetamine in Cantor's blood, concluded Cantor died from an overdose. But during Born's countless trips and phone calls to South Carolina, she learned something new that authorities hadn't said before. "Just from what they were telling me, I knew things were wrong," she said. "To look at the situation, it probably did call for some sort of force, but I don't think they knew what they were doing. If they had, I don't think it would have ended like this." Born took a copy of the autopsy report to Dr. George Thomas, then a Shawnee County coroner, who noted an error that increased the reported methamphetamine level in Cantor's blood by about 100 times. At a coroner's inquest in Mullins, S.C., in March 1995, the patrol car videotape was played and showed that Cantor had been held to the ground for up to two minutes before he was rolled on his back. Examiners rewrote the autopsy report to show that Cantor had died of methamphetamine toxicity along with positional asphyxia, or suffocation, because of the position of or force upon a body. "Any position that screws up your breathing can do it," Thomas said last week. "When you can't move your diaphragm, you've only got a few minutes." Born filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April 1996 against the three law enforcement agencies that responded to the convenience store. As a result of that lawsuit, the South Carolina Highway Patrol and Marion County and Mullins law enforcement agencies were ordered in January 1999 to ensure their officers are trained in the proper use of pepper spray, know the risks of positional asphyxia, can perform CPR and promptly get medical help for offenders in distress. "With very combative people, there's sometimes no other way to control them than to hog-tie them," Topeka police Sgt. Chuck Haggard said. "Sudden death syndrome is not a totally understood phenomenon, but part of what kills people is the mechanism in your body that keeps you going past the point of exhaustion -- past where a normal person would go." Their bodies can't take the stress so they stop functioning, Haggard said. And using a structured tier of low-to-high force techniques, Haggard teaches officers the characteristics to spot in suspects that could foreshadow imminent death, which include paranoia, profuse sweating, incoherent speech and extended violent struggling, he said. "We want our officers to recognize people who could die in our custody," he said, stressing that candidates usually are high on drugs. "We try to stop extended struggles as soon as possible." Born said she knows the officers who arrested her son didn't mean him any harm. But her march to change how they deal with those situations was something she doesn't want anyone to forget. "I never believed they pulled up and said, 'Let's kill this young man,' " she said. "And I knew all along that I'd never bring him back, but this fight made his death bearable. It makes me feel good that the facts of his death are being used in a good way." - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart