When a youth at the Bowling Brook Preparatory School lost consciousness last week while being restrained by staff, workers delayed administering CPR or calling for an ambulance because they believed he was pretending to be asleep, according to a report sent by the school to the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services.
When the paramedics were finally summoned, 17-year-old Isaiah Simmons was rushed to Carroll Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Bowling Brook's account of the efforts by staff to restrain Simmons for at least three hours is contained in a required report to the juvenile services agency, which placed Simmons in the residential program for juvenile offenders. The report, released yesterday, describes in clinical terms the hours of restraint and what happened when Simmons lost consciousness.
" [In] time, [Simmons] stopped struggling and became nonresponsive," the report says. "The collective thinking of intervening staff and students was that [Simmons] was feigning sleep.
"[Simmons] was then raised from the prone position to the seated and brought outside, for staff to assess and check vital signs. Within minutes, [Simmons] was returned back in to the house for staff to administer CPR as the ambulance was simultaneously called."
Medical experts say it can be dangerous to delay even for few minutes beginning cardiopulmonary resuscitation or calling an ambulance.
"It's been well documented that the sooner you start CPR, the better the chances are that patients will survive," Eric J. Beauvois, an emergency room physician at St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore, said yesterday. "The sooner you can get the paramedics involved and the sooner you can get the patient in the hospital, the better. All those will increase your chance of resuscitation. A matter of minutes can make a difference."
Bowling Brook's report provides the first detailed description by the school of the Jan. 23 incident that ended with Simmons' death. It differs significantly in tone from the vivid account given by Ronnell Williams, 18, one of at least six Bowling Brook students who witnessed the incident.
"They grabbed [Simmons] and slammed his ass down," Williams said yesterday in an interview. "He was face down ... eagle-spread, his arms was out and his legs, too," he said. "There were five staff. One on each leg, one on each arm, and one had his knees on [Simmons'] back."
