How could they leave my son like this?
Mentally vulnerable Tom was arrested after behaving oddly in a town centre. Minutes after these three policemen bound and gagged him, he was brain dead. Here his mother asks ...
THOMAS Orchard had been dead for nearly two years before his mother, Alison, saw for herself how it happened. Although a lot of questions were answered by the CCTV footage, the experience was, she says, simply too much for a mother to bear.
No one should have to watch their beloved child perish before their eyes.
Thomas died after he was held in a police cell in October 2012. A paranoid schizophrenic who’d had mental health issues since he was a teenager, Thomas had been arrested in Exeter city centre on suspicion of a public order offence. His erratic behaviour had led police to think he was drunk or on drugs.
The footage Alison saw shows the 32-yearold being held down and gagged with a large fabric webbing belt, which is supposed to be used as a restraining device around the body.
Bound and gagged, he is carried to a cell where he is placed face down on a mattress. There he struggles for a few minutes before the restraints are removed. He’s then left alone in the cell for 12 minutes, during which time he appears to neither move nor speak. Thomas had suffered a cardiac arrest and never regained consciousness.
The video made truly shocking viewing when it was released at Bristol Crown Court last month as three police officers stood trial for manslaughter. For Alison it was unbearable.
‘We fought for two years to see that footage but I couldn’t watch it all,’ she says. ‘That moment when ...’ She stops. Collects herself. ‘How could they have put that belt around his face and head? You wouldn’t do that to a dog. It’s barbaric. When I think about how he must have been feeling.’ She shakes her head.
‘I just … it’s almost like my brain can’t go there. It’s so heart-wrenching. So deeply distressing. I can’t put it into words. Just think how scared he must have been.’
His brother Jack, 34, who, along with his mother, father Ken, and 38-year-old sister Jo, viewed that footage at the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s London headquarters in 2014, says: ‘The hardest part was seeing him lying there on his own in that cell for 12 minutes. You’re willing people to help him yet you know you’ve just witnessed him die.’
Alison is in tears now. ‘That’s when I couldn’t watch any more: when he’s just lying there and his legs flop out. That was his last movement. He just goes …’ She expels air from her lungs to demonstrate. ‘As a mother you think “he’s dead”, and you know you’ve just sat there watching your son die.’
Thomas was taken to hospital from the police station and died a week later when the family took the decision to withdraw life support after tests showed he was brain dead. Four months later, the Crown Prosecution Service decided to prosecute the officers involved. A post-mortem examination would reveal that, far from being intoxicated, this young, troubled man, who was a church caretaker, had simply stopped taking his medication.
The pathologist identified the cause of death as cardiac arrest resulting from struggle, panic and the lengthy period he spent lying on his chest, and asphyxia. A hospital consultant would also tell Thomas’s family that burst blood vessels in his eyes were similar to the injuries suffered by victims of the Hillsborough disaster, who were crushed to death.
This week, three police officers, Custody sergeant Jan Kingshott and detention officers Simon Tansley and Michael Marsden, were cleared of manslaughter by unlawful act and manslaughter by gross negligence following a ten-week trial.
Thomas’s family know they must accept the jury’s verdict but it doesn’t sit easily with them. Of the 17 deaths in or following police custody in 2014/2015, eight were people identified as having mental health concerns. Ten of them were restrained.
Devon and Cornwall police force remains under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission for suspected corporate manslaughter.
‘One of the key issues that came out during the trial is that a couple of people who phoned the police station believed him to be mentally ill. “Off the rails,” were the words used. Another person said: “He’s not in touch with reality.” But what happened on the street wasn’t fully communicated to the police in police custody,’ says Alison.
‘ Instead, all over the custody records were the words drink and drugs. Why didn’t they even consider he might be ill and take him to hospital instead of putting him in a cell? They never tried to talk to him.’
CARINGfor a child with mental health issues is not an easy thing. Since Thomas’s death, not a day has gone by where his mother has not asked herself if she could have done things differently.
‘I think it’s fair to say we struggled to know how to bring him up because he was so different from my other two. He struggled at school and, at 12, was diagnosed with dyslexia. Jack was two- and- a- half years younger but soon overtook him academically,’ she says.
‘All the time we were trying to say: “But Tom, you’re practical and good at climbing trees.” But, of course, Jack was good at climbing trees, too. He was good at everything and I think that was obvious to Thomas.
‘He had a low self- esteem and I didn’t know how to reverse that.’
Indeed, unlike Jo and Jack, who were gregarious, bright children, Thomas was something of a loner who preferred the company of animals to people and spent much time outdoors, enjoying what Jack fondly calls a ‘free-range’ childhood, at their cottage in Crediton, Devon.
Thomas’s problems began in earnest when, after leaving school at 16, he began to smoke cannabis. ‘Later, when we understood he had mental health issues, we spoke to a psychiatrist and asked if the drugs had been a trigger,’ says Alison. He said: “It might be but it also might be that someone who is mentally ill might turn to drugs to make life better for themselves.”
‘When he got fed up with us asking what he was doing and who he was with, he’d take himself off for a few days. He even chose to live homeless for a while. That broke my heart.’
Jack, who works as a management consultant, remembers a difficult time: ‘I was sad for him and sad to see how hard it was for my parents. This wasn’t a big bang where one moment he was fine, then the next he was a paranoid schizophrenic. It was a gradual decline. He became more and more withdrawn.’
On Thomas’s 21st birthday, police and doctors were called to the family home after he became very agitated and was hearing voices. He was sectioned. Over the next eight years, he was detained in hospital five times, the longest period for more than a year.
‘Thomas was never, ever violent,’ says Alison. ‘It was more that his behaviour became increasingly bizarre. Salt was a big thing for him. He’d sprinkle it in the garden around the house to protect us. He saw it as a way of kind of purifying himself.
‘Back then there wasn’t a great deal of support for mental illness. That’s why we got him sectioned. He needed help.’ Thomas was finally hospitalised for a year after setting fire to his bedroom carpet when he left a candle burning.
‘I can remember going to see him and being overwhelmed by a feeling of peace that someone was looking after him at last,’ says Alison.
‘He was being cared for and he was safe. It was while he was there that the psychiatrist let slip he was suffering with paranoid schizophrenia. I felt … I don’t know how to put it, but I suppose relieved is the word. There
was a label, a name, a diagnosis.’
During that year, as doctors sought to stabilise thomas’s mental illness with medication, he spent much of his time in the hospital chapel. ‘he became a Christian and that was an important thing for him. When he was discharged from hospital to a sort of halfway house. the church became a great support.
‘he was doing so well. he was fishing, going to a farm to do voluntary work, and working at the church. he was even learning to drive. I saw him two weeks before he died and he said: “I feel better than I’ve felt in years.” ’
alison was walking the dog when she got a call from thomas’s social worker, saying he hadn’t turned up for a meeting, and they suspected he wasn’t taking his medication.
‘I had this feeling I had to get home. thomas needed me. I ran home with the dog. I now know it was about the time he was dying.’ alison was still covered in mud from her dash across the fields when two police officers arrived at the door. ‘they said: “We have some worrying news.” It was tom. he was in hospital. I was shaking. I didn’t know what to do. they blue-lighted me to exeter.
‘the first thing I said when I saw him lying there was: “he’s not there.” although tom was very quiet he had this huge inner presence but it just wasn’t there. I’m afraid I don’t remember much more about that day. We didn’t know why he had collapsed and neither did the hospital.’
the family only began to suspect something untoward had happened in police custody five days after thomas was admitted to intensive care, when a doctor explained about the burst blood vessels in his eyes.
‘We were trying to piece together what happened. Jo said: “there’s only one explanation for this. the police did it.” I said: “Don’t be silly Jo. Of course they didn’t. that’s a conspiracy theory. Stop this.” ’
the family spent every hour possible at his bedside. they spoke to him. Wrote notes. Shared memories. Laughed. Sobbed. ‘there came a point when I said to the consultant, “do you think tom’s going to die?” he said, “he is”.’ On October 10 the family took the decision to withdraw life support after medical tests revealed thomas was brain dead. ‘that was torturous,’ she says.
‘there are certain rules, so if someone breathes once they are off life support, you have to put them back on. Probably because he had a very strong heart and lungs, he’d take breaths so they had to keep putting him back on.
‘It began at 3am and we sat there for hours waiting for his next breath. he didn’t die until later that afternoon.’ Incredibly, the family still had no idea what had happened to thomas in custody. Indeed, the first they heard of the restraint belt was following his post-mortem. thankfully, one of the staff at the hospital had said, ‘I’m not really sure what’s going on here but I’d get a good solicitor’.
For, make no mistake about it, thomas’s family have had to fight every inch of the way to seek justice for their son’s death. they have been helped by the charity Inquest, which provides emotional and legal support to those who have suffered a death in custody.
the police force had a period of time to decide if they wanted to have a second autopsy. We had to wait seven months to get his body back before we could bury him.’ the distress of those months is written on alison’s face.
‘I was traumatised. there were all sorts of emotions,’ she says. ‘It was like I was in denial. I felt while I knew his body was in a freezer chest in exeter he was still there.
‘I knew he wasn’t really but I went through a period where I thought, “I don’t want to fight to have his body any more. I don’t want to bury it. I want it to be around”.’
AGAIN,there are tears. ‘how could they have done that? how could they not have shown him more compassion?
‘they said he was being violent in the cell. You think, “he was trying to breathe”. they said he moved his head to the left. You think, “he was struggling for his life”. they said, “he was lying in the cell as if he was sleeping or compliant”. You think, “he was dead”. they called him an angry young man. You think, “he was frightened”.
‘I get more angry every day this goes on. It has taken four-and-ahalf years to get to trial. this morning I thought: “Why don’t I just move to France and forget it? Why put myself through it?”
‘I know I have to accept the jury’s verdict, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept the outcome. We have to focus now on the corporate manslaughter investigation and hope the CPS feels there is a case to be brought against Devon and Cornwall Police.
‘I have to carry on for my son. he was a vulnerable human being, not an animal. he should have been treated like one.’
THOMAS’S family have requested a donation be made to mental health charity Sane, which offers emotional support to those affected by mental illness.