“Dead recruit's family attorney speaks”

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 05:49 PM PST

Updated: Friday, 14 Jan 2011, 11:40 PM EST
Published : Friday, 14 Jan 2011, 8:30 PM EST

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) - For the first time, we're hearing from the attorney representing the family of a police recruit who died after a training exercise.
On December 9, medics raced John Kohn to the hospital with head injuries, where he died nine days later.
Kohn failed at the defensive tactics training he had to pass to be a policeman. WAVY.com has a thousand pages of documents , and in one of the interviews after the incident Lt. Pratt says, "If the recruit lost their weapon training would be stopped. If the the recruit became defenseless it would be stopped."
Sadly, in John Kohn's case, the training wasn't stopped.
"Recruits are required to perform to what they will be exposed to in the field, and so I have no reason to believe that this is a case of hazing," said Attorney Jim Lewis who represents the family of John Kohn.
There has been no decision made whether a lawsuit will be filed. It is very difficult to bring a successful suit against a municipality that is performing in a governmental sense.
Lewis admitted it is not hazing, but he is disappointed with the way the City of Norfolk said a collision between Kohn and another recruit would lead to Kohn's death as the City first suggested. "It is disturbing to us to learn that there was a whole lot more information about what happened to Mr. Kohn, and how it happened that we were led to believe by the police department."
Two days before the collision incident, Kohn, possibly without a helmet, was hit with boxing gloves by instructors.
"He received a violent blow to the head. As he described, he got his bell rung and he told his wife," said Lewis.
It is also clear from the incident documents that Kohn told other recruits and at least one instructor.
Then two days later Kohn collided with another recruit which is seen on tape . The other recruit Kohn hit requested to sit out of defensive tactics training because he was dizzy. Sadly, Kohn never made the same request and pushed on.
"He was a soldier, and he wanted to go into police work. He was a gung-ho guy and tried to suck it up and move on," Lewis said.
Kohn failed twice in exercises to fight off instructors acting like suspects who successfully grabbed Kohn's gun. That is a vital exercise recruits must pass: taking control of a situation when the officer might be overtaken by a suspect who wants to grab the officer's gun and kill him. The third time at this he was against the lead instructor Leldon Sapp who was also a safety officer and who was supposed to observe exhaustion in recruits.
Leldon told investigators, "I hit him with the right hand to his caged helmet he wears...his head popped back. Then I hit him two or three more times before he started to do things."
Kohn was unresponsive after the encounter with Sapp, and was making a snoring gurgling sound. There was Trouble. 911 was called, "Yea I have a head injury to a recruit...with difficulty breathing."
Kohn was taken to the hospital, and he died December 18. "Mr. Kohn had a serious severe concussion from the blows he took from his training yes...no question about it," said Lewis.
The autopsy is not complete, but Jim Lewis said Kohn had a serious brain hemorrhage from the violent knocking of the brain during training.
Lewis compared this to NFL football players who now have increased awareness of concussions and who must sit out of games if they get concussions. Attorney Jim Lewis says the way the city handled the flow
of information has created suspicions rightly or wrongly.

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Saturday, 15 January 2011

“Dead recruit's family attorney speaks”

“Dead recruit's family attorney speaks”

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