‘Take his pulse, he’s blue’: Bodycam footage shows fatal encounter between epileptic Indiana man and first responders

By: CNN

Posted: Sep 30, 2024 3:03 PM EDT

WBBM via CNN Newsource

DeMotte, Ind. -- Rhyker Earl’s family says he had been living with seizures for more than seven years.

They happened so often that family members developed a routine to care for him after an episode: They’d help him get comfortable, offer him water or Gatorade and, in some cases, they’d call 911.

On September 8, after Earl had multiple seizures, his grandmother says she did just that, requesting assistance for a medical emergency at his home near DeMotte, Indiana. But what began as a routine encounter with Jasper County Sheriff’s deputies and EMTs from nearby Keener Township that evening ended in tragedy.

The sheriff’s office released a compilation of bodycam footage Friday from deputies at the scene that shows them handcuffing Earl and pinning him down for more than 20 minutes as he struggles and repeatedly shouts for help.

In the video, members of Earl’s family can be heard urging him to calm down and explaining to deputies that the 26-year-old had recently suffered a seizure and was “confused.”

His family later grew panicked after Earl was given multiple shots of what appear to be sedatives and he became unresponsive. Less than 30 minutes after deputies arrived at his home, video shows Earl stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated. The father of two was transported to a hospital and placed on life support. He died two days later.

Indiana State Police have opened an investigation into Earl’s death and declined to comment about an ongoing investigation. The Jasper County Sheriff’s office noted they released the bodycam footage with permission from state police.

The results of Earl’s autopsy and toxicology screening are pending, his family’s lawyers said.

In a statement announcing the release of the video, the Jasper County Sheriff’s office said it “is not drawing any conclusions about the actions of anyone involved in this incident.”

“We feel it is critical that our community have as much information as possible and evaluate the incident independently of outside influences,” the statement said.

“Mr. Earl was suffering a medical emergency and demonstrating mental difficulties and significant physical resistance to the medical personnel on the scene. The responsibility of the deputies was to prevent Mr. Earl from harming himself or the EMT personnel while they provided medical aid.”

Though Earl is White, his death casts a renewed spotlight on fatal police encounters with civilians, an issue that has gained national attention and sparked calls for police reform following the deaths of several unarmed Black men in recent years.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Earl family, stood alongside his relatives and friends at a news conference Monday as some watched the bodycam footage for the first time.

Although the family has not filed a lawsuit, Crump vowed to “explore every legal avenue to get full justice for Rhyker.”

“Either this is going to be a George Floyd situation where the lack of oxygen to the brain killed him, or it’s going to be an Elijah McClain situation where EMTs administering drugs killed him. We don’t know,” Crump said.

“Any time a person is complaining about breathing and saying ‘I can’t breathe,’ I vow that we will get to the truth of what happened if they die in police custody,” Crump said.

‘Take his pulse, he’s blue’

At a news conference last week before bodycam footage was released, Connie Widner, Earl’s grandmother, told reporters she called 911 thinking they would help her grandson.

“I will regret it until the day I die that I ever called anybody. Because I am sure I could have took care of him better than he was treated when they got there,” she said.

Earl’s encounter with first responders began earlier that day, when he had a seizure at his sister’s home.

“The paramedics were called there, some of the same ones that was at his house later that night,” Widner said at last week’s news conference.

Her husband, Chuck, told reporters a deputy sheriff was also present that morning and they “had no problems.”

Widner told reporters Earl often appeared “confused” after he had a seizure and insisted he was never violent. She said she brought Earl back home later that afternoon so he could take his medication for epilepsy and sleep using a breathing machine.

But once they were home, Widner said Earl had two more seizures, and she decided to call 911. Bodycam footage shows a deputy arrived as Earl was getting dressed to go to the hospital. In the video, he appears unsteady and confused as he makes his way from the living room to the kitchen.

The footage does not clearly show what prompted a deputy to rush into the kitchen and wrestle Earl to the ground, harshly admonishing him for touching a medic while placing him in handcuffs.

Earl begged for his life for more than 20 minutes and struggled against the deputies and EMTs leaning on his arms and legs as they administered at least four shots of what appears to be sedatives.

The footage shows first responders discussed whether Earl had taken illicit drugs because the sedatives were not working.

In the video, EMTs discussed giving Earl shots of ketamine. Before administering one shot, an EMT asks if someone could call the hospital “and just like give them a heads-up of what’s coming in and make sure they’re cool with it because we’re about to give him this much.”

An EMT later says, “we’re going to need oxygen, probably have an intubation ready.”

Minutes later, Earl falls silent and his aunt, Miracle Gawlinski, asks if he’d been given medication, according to the video. Gawlinski told reporters during the news conference last week she arrived to find her nephew was face down.

“I had to beg and plead for anybody, whether it was the EMTs, police, I didn’t care. ‘Do something, he’s blue. Take his pulse, he’s blue! Please do something,’ before an EMT acted and finally took his pulse and realized there wasn’t one,” Gawlinski recalled.

“We trusted the professionals that evening. We had no doubt in our mind until it was too late,” she said.

Footage shows first responders worked for more than 10 minutes to resuscitate Earl. In a statement, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said Earl “became unresponsive, was taken to the hospital, and later passed away.” The statement did not address the administration of possible sedatives.

The sheriff’s statement also said a lawyer for Earl’s family was spreading “gross falsehoods concerning the actions of our deputies.”

At the news conference last week, Crump and his co-counsel, Stephen Wagner, alleged that deputies responded inappropriately to someone in a “post-seizure state” and used “excessive force.”

“Until first responders understand that you don’t treat a seizure patient or an autistic patient or someone in a mental health crisis as a criminal – until they understand that and respond appropriately – there will be more press conferences like this,” Wagner said.

A ‘post-seizure’ state

Seizures occur when there is a sudden, uncontrollable burst of electrical activity in the brain, according to the Mayo Clinic.

After having a seizure, a person may experience symptoms including confusion, fatigue, anxiety and frustration. This period is known as the “postictal” phase and, according to the Mayo Clinic, recovery can take hours for some.

In 2023, the Epilepsy Foundation’s Jeanne A. Carpenter Epilepsy Legal Defense Fund partnered with the Morehouse College of Medicine to train law enforcement officers on how to respond to someone who has recently experienced a seizure.

“This kind of training of law enforcement and first responders should be a matter of routine,” said Allison Nichol, senior director of legal advocacy at the Fund.

While she could not comment on the specifics of the Earl case, Nichol said “law enforcement can and often does confuse what they’re seeing as overuse of a substance or overuse of alcohol – that happens when they come upon an accident. What they don’t think about is that this person is in a post-seizure state.”

Nichol said she takes multiple calls a week from lawyers and people living with epilepsy who have had an “adverse interaction” with law enforcement following a seizure.

“Simply knowing that a person has epilepsy or is having a seizure doesn’t guarantee a correct response to that situation. That really requires some training,” she said.

At the news conference Monday, Cassie Paris, the mother of Earl’s children, told reporters over the years she witnessed Earl have more than 50 seizures and after an episode “he’s never been aggressive, only lost, scared and confused.”

“I have to remind him who I am and what’s going on multiple times before he understands,” she said. “The last message I received from him said, ‘I had a seizure, but I’m fine.’ The next thing I knew he was on life support.”

The family also told reporters Paris has a nerve condition called MG, or Myasthenia Gravis, and that the symptoms can sometimes be mistaken for intoxication.

“If I’m ever in a medical emergency, I hope and pray I’m not in the same situation as Rhyker,” Paris said. “His children deserve to have both of their parents and now the whole family is worried and concerned about calling for help.”

CNN’s Virginia Langmaid and Whitney Wild contributed to this report.