Missing son
The simplest of complaints can turn out to be the most complicated to unravel.
Here is one such tale:
Sunceray Gladney, 50, of East Baltimore, called to say that her son had been beaten last month and lay in a hospital bed, unidentified, even after she had filed a missing persons report with Baltimore police. She found her son by calling first the morgue, then area hospitals, and found Kareem Johnson unconscious at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
She wanted to know why police didn't find her son.
She said Kareem, who turned 29 yesterday, had left home on July 28 to pay an overdue bill and was beaten as he waited at a bus stop at Saratoga and Eutaw streets. Her husband, Ronald Gladney, called police on Aug. 7. An officer came to their home and filled out a report.
Relatives then started calling hospitals and found Kareem on Aug. 8. He is paralyzed on his right side, his mother said, and had severe injuries to his neck and head. He has since been released to a rehabilitation hospital, but Gladney said she hasn't heard from police since she filed the report.
"I have no confidence in the police," she said. "My son could've been dead."
Officer Nicole Monroe, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore Police Department, confirmed that Kareem Johnson was beaten on Eutaw Street on July 28.
He had been jumped shortly before 4 a.m. (so he apparently didn't return home right after paying his bill), the police report says, and was hit over the head with a bottle. He was rushed to Mercy Medical Center, but because his injuries were so severe, he was transfered to Shock Trauma, where he lapsed into a coma.
The missing persons report wasn't filed until Aug. 7 (Gladney said she thought her son had gone home to his Westside apartment and didn't worry until one of his girlfriends mentioned she hadn't heard from Kareem).
Gladney found her son on Aug. 8. She said her son had told paramedics his name, which eventually got to doctors at the truama center. That information never got to police.
Monroe reminded me of Zachary Sowers, who was beaten last year on a street in Canton and listed as a John Doe at Johns Hopkins. His wife flew home from Chicago and scoured Hopkins for unnamed patients before spotting her unconscious husband in a room.
I can see how Kareem Johnson's name could be listed with the hospital but not get to the officer or detectives handling the beating. Did Mercy or Shock Trauma call police to investigate the beating victim, or did officials there think paramedics took care of that? If paramedics had the name, did they tell the police?
And why did the victim's family wait nine days to report Kareem missing? Paperwork takes time, and perhaps quicker action by relatives could have led them to Kareem sooner. Monroe said she would forward the complaint up the chain of command to determine if procedures were followed.
An update:
Kareem's father called me a little while ago with some more information, which both helps understand this problem, and at the same time raises more questions.
Ronald Gladney said that police did take fingerprints from Kareem at Shock Trauma but compared them to a 2004 arrest when his son lived with his grandmother on Argyle Avenue in West Baltimore. The grandmother is now dead and block all but demolished, so naturally police found nothing.
Gladney said that had police pulled a more recent arrest report from 2005 in Towson, when Baltimore police arrested Kareem on a marijuana charge (he received probation) they would have found his address Durham Street in East Baltimore, where his grandparent's live. I found he was right with a quick check of computerized court records.
I'll keep stay on this one for you
Comments
The urban inner city sums and inner city gangs problemsand drug problems in Baltimore Mayland USA are exactly the same as the urban problems inner city gangs crime and deprivation in London in the UK and in the city of Birmingham in the UK.
Is it true that Eoghan quigg is actually gay?
Posted by: Hugh | November 15, 2009 2:12 PM