E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Mom Blames 911 for Child's Death
By Scott Sandlin
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
One-year-old Richie Brown didn't have to die, at least not alone in a pasture near Encino where his mom left him in the throes of a psychotic breakdown, according to a civil lawsuit filed over the boy's death.
Startled witnesses driving down the highway at 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 25, 2007, saw a naked woman carrying a baby and called 911.
But the dispatcher, uncertified and working her fourth 12-hour shift in a row, mistakenly directed State Police to search a location four miles north of Vaughn instead of four miles north of Encino, according to a lawsuit against Torrance County law enforcement and State Police filed in state 7th Judicial District Court in Moriarty.
Meanwhile, the dispatcher's certified partner slept in a corner and her supervisor watched "Married with Children" on his laptop, according to court documents.
"When the call was made, he (Richie) was alive," said attorney David Jaramillo. "The whole purpose of the emergency responder system is to respond in circumstances where it would matter the most, such as one where a little boy is going to die of exposure."
The lawsuit was filed in October by attorneys Jaramillo and Rachel Higgins on behalf of the child's estate. The case was initiated by the deceased child's mother and father, but the lawsuit does not include them by name.
District Attorney Clint Wellborn announced earlier this month that he would not pursue charges against the mother, Diana Willis, now 27, saying no reasonable jury would conclude she was not insane at the time she abandoned the child to die.
Willis was overtaken by the delusional belief that her car was under attack by giant spiders. According to the lawsuit, she stopped the car she had been driving on U.S. 285, tore off her and Richie's clothing, covered the 15-month-old boy with a blanket and began walking toward Encino.
As state prosecutors would note in deciding to drop charges of child abandonment resulting in death, Willis "actually thought she was protecting her child."
Forensic psychologist Sam Roll described Willis as believing she was in the midst "of an Armageddon-like battle" in which the spiders chasing her were a sign of danger.
When she ripped off her clothes, "she did so in a desperate attempt to save herself and her son," Roll wrote in a report. She saw the moon and a huge constellation morph into a giant spider and viewed it as "a sign that the rapture was at hand."
A motorist and her family saw Willis with her son on the shoulder of the highway and called 911.
Torrance County dispatcher Jeanine Arnold took the call. The lawsuit says she relayed inaccurate information to a woman State Police dispatcher, who erroneously coded it as a "welfare check" — giving a naked woman alongside a highway lower priority than a stolen car — and sent a single officer to the wrong place. When the officer found nothing, the search ended.
Arnold's supervisor James Ledbetter "did nothing to verify the details of the call" Arnold described, nor did he follow up to see if there was an adequate response, according to the complaint.
A distraught, disoriented and naked Willis walked into a highway department building in Encino about 8:30 a.m. and told workers she had walked and run along the highway for some time before putting her child down in a field, becoming distracted by something in the sky, then being unable to find him.
Arnold, in a deposition in the now-dismissed criminal case, acknowledged that she "screwed up," but said she was not alone in making mistakes. She said she tried unsuccessfully to call Vaughn and Encino police, and made a repeat call to State Police "because I was told their officers were busy, and (the dispatcher) was turning it over to Tucumcari."
She didn't follow up, however, and State Police never called back when they failed to find anyone, according to her deposition.
Arnold, who was subsequently terminated, said no one pulled up the tape of the 911 call to listen to what the motorist had described.
Dennis Wallin, the lawyer defending the county, said he does not believe the county has liability under the Tort Claims Act. He also said the evidence doesn't support a claim that the child could have been saved.
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
