Sheriff’s Dept. sued in wrongful death case

 The Whitley County Sheriff’s Office and one of its deputies are named as defendants in a lawsuit claiming they are responsible for the death of an elderly man this past January.

According to the civil complaint, filed in Whitley Circuit Court last Friday, the department and deputy William Harris caused the “premature and untimely death” of Williams Oaks Sr. in January by failing to respond to a 911 call reporting Oaks crawling across I-75 near the three-mile-marker on Jan. 3. Oaks was found dead by authorities six days later on Jan. 9 about 150 yards where he was spotted on the roadway by a passing motorist. Autopsy results revealed Oaks died of “exposure to the elements.”

According to the lawsuit, filed by Williamsburg attorney Jane Butcher, Harris “personally accepted and took responsibility over” the call after it was given to him, via radio, by a Whitley County 911 dispatcher, but never went to check out the report.

Derek Brown, who is an IT Director for Jellico Community Hospital, was the driver that saw Oaks on I-75 and recalls the day he made the call. He said he was driving southbound on I-75 on Jan. 3 when he noticed a man scuttling about “on his elbows.” He decided to call 911 to report the incident.

“It was a weird sort of crawl,” Brown said. “I pulled over to the emergency lane on the southbound side and called 911 and told them there was a guy crawling around on the interstate and that he was going to get hit.”

“I told them it was right at the three-mile-marker … within about 10 yards of it,” Brown said. “He just sort of slumped over and fell over the guardrail and went over the hill.”

Brown said he waited around for a police officer to show up, but no one ever did.

Records of the incident with the Whitley County 911 Center are inexplicably sparse.

Assistant 911 Director Jessica Taylor said an audio recording of Brown’s call does not exist because the recorder for that particular dispatch station was not working that day.

The Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) incident report appears incomplete, but shows Brown’s call came into the center at about 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 3. It wasn’t actually dispatched to officers until about 19 minutes later at 3:03 p.m. In a short recording of radio communications, the 911 Center dispatcher can be heard asking for any available police officers to respond to the call. Harris, simply replies “10-4” but never says if he’s en route. Nothing on the incident report or the recordings indicated police ever responded to the call.

Brown said he left after waiting around for about 10 minutes because he didn’t feel comfortable attempting to cross I-75 to see what happened to the man. He said the interstate was extremely busy with traffic that day.

The CAD incident report contains little in the way of narrative. It shows the officer en route time, arrival time and “call clear time” all as 3:29 p.m.

Brown later followed up after seeing a news story about Oaks being missing and thought he looked familiar. He said he called the Whitley County Sheriff’s Department to report his suspicions, but no one ever returned his call. He noticed a mobile command center set up at a church on US 25W, which was being used as a base to search for Oaks, and told authorities in person where he thought he spotted the man. A short search ended when Oak’s body was found.

During an interview in Feb., K.Y. Fuson, Chief Deputy with the Whitley County Sheriff’s Department, adamantly contends that his department responded to the initial call on Jan. 3 appropriately, and points out that a search effort was not as intensive because Oaks was not actually reported as a “missing person” until several days later.

Fuson also says he believes there is information missing from the 911 Center’s records, pointing to a lack of an audio recording of Brown’s call as proof there were equipment problems that day.

But according to the lawsuit, the next day, family members of Oaks attempted to file a “missing person’s” report with the Whitley County Sheriff’s Department but were not allowed to do so. They apparently attempted to file a similar report on Jan. 5 but were also denied. It wasn’t until Jan. 6 a report was finally filed, but the lawsuit says the department failed to issue a “Golden Alert” for Oaks, despite a statutory obligation to do so.

The "Golden Alert" system works for adults in much the same way as Amber Alerts work for missing children. In the past, police had to wait 72 hours to begin looking for missing adults. Now, a search is to begin immediately for a person 18 years or older, who suffers from Alzheimer’s or a mental disability. Normally, family members of an adult who went missing would have to wait 48 hours to file a missing person’s report.

The lawsuit claims Oaks suffered “physical, mental and cognitive impairments.”

According to Oak’s son-in-law, Troy Thomas, Oaks suffered brain damage after being severely beaten with a whiskey bottle years ago.

There has been no official response to the lawsuit yet in court filings.

The complaint is asking for compensatory and punitive damages against the Whitley County Sheriff’s Office and Harris, both individually and in his official capacity as a deputy.