Arrested for Epilepsy
When a Seizure Gets You Thrown in Jail
By JIM AVILA and LARA SETRAKIAN, ABC News Law & Justice Unit
Nov. 23, 2006 — - Roughly three million Americans live with epilepsy. And a surprising number of them go to jail for it.
Why? Around the country, police officers and bystanders who see someone having a seizure mistake it for disorderly, criminal behavior.
That's what happened to Daniel Beloungea of Pontiac, Mich. On most days Beloungea lives the normal life of a 48-year-old single man. But roughly once a week, he loses total control of his body and mind to an epileptic seizure.
A seizure took over Beloungea's body while walking through his suburban Detroit neighborhood last April. When an onlooker in a neighbor's house saw Beloungea having the seizure, which includes rapid repetitive arm motion, she misinterpreted it as criminal conduct. Specifically, she thought Beloungea was masturbating in public.
With that misconception in mind, she called the Oakland Police Department. When police arrived on the scene, Beloungea was still undergoing his seizure, acting disoriented and not responding to questions.
When officers couldn't get through to Beloungea they drew their weapons, shocked him with a high-voltage taser, hit him with a baton and wrestled him to the ground. They then handcuffed him and put him in a police car.
Undersheriff Michael McCabe of the Oakland County Police Department said that the officers tasered Beloungea because he lunged at one of them. Beloungea and his lawyer say the more police got physical the more Beloungea got agitated and aggressive -- typical behavior, according to the Epilepsy Foundation of America, for a person restrained while having a partial complex seizure. Beloungea's wild motions and inability to communicate were not defiance or resistance, but classic symptoms of epilepsy
The officers put Beloungea in jail, citing assault of a police officer and resisting arrest. Throughout the incident Beloungea, was wearing a medical alert bracelet identifying him as an epileptic, stating his name and the contact numbers of people who can be reached in case of an emergency.
Later, Michigan state psychologists who examined Beloungea would confirm that he was having a seizure at the time of his arrest and that he was no danger to himself or to others.
The Epilepsy Foundation of America said it sees cases like Beloungea's around the country. The foundation said it could cite more than a dozen cases of police violence toward people in the midst of a seizure over the past 10 years. In 1999, Joaquin Gonzales died after he was arrested and hog tied while having an epileptic seizure in a Taos County, N.M., jail. County officials fired the guards on duty that night and paid Gonzales' family a $1.25 million settlement for his wrongful death.
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