Mental Health Association of Portland

From the Portland Mercury, October 6, 2011

Teenager Kyeron Fair’s Saga with Portland’s Justice System Comes to a Confusing Close

In the narrow hallway of Multnomah County’s main courthouse, the Fair family crowded into a tight circle last Wednesday, September 28.

“In Jesus’ name, we ask for justice for this boy!” called out Kelli Jarrell, the matriarch of a family that has gone through hell in the year since her son, Kyeron Fair, was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. Fair’s saga with the local criminal justice system—including a mental breakdown and allegations that he was severely beaten by jail guards—has become a troubling example of the all-too-common intersection between mental illness and incarceration.

And now, 12 months after Fair’s arrest, the family has lost faith in justice. That Wednesday, they were at court attempting to fire Fair’s public defender, Gary Bertoni, days before a crucial deadline to decide whether to accept a guilty plea for 10 months in jail or go to trial. This week, in a quiet end to his plight, the family accepted the plea anyway.

“I have lost trust in Gary Bertoni,” Fair, an 18-year-old African American from Northeast Portland, told Judge Eric Bergstrom repeatedly during last week’s hearing, saying he believes Bertoni withheld crucial information from him.

“Your case has certainly had an unusual progression,” acknowledged the judge. “But it has also been given a pretty generous offer by the state. I’m not sure you want to start all over with a new attorney.”

Noting the public cost of restarting the legal process after a year of work, the court said Fair could get a new lawyer only if he paid for one out of pocket.

And so Fair pleaded guilty.

“He said he’s just bummed out, he just doesn’t have it in him to fight,” said Jarrell. “He’s not going to get the justice he deserves.”

As reported extensively in Portland African American newspaper The Skanner, Fair’s struggles with the court system began September 13, 2010, when officers pulled the Parkrose High School senior out of class to arrest him for his role in a three-person armed robbery of a pound of pot from a medical marijuana user. The 17-year-old was booked at the Multnomah County Detention Center (MCDC), then taken to the county’s juvenile detention center. That’s where things got weird.

READ – Portland Teen Hospitalized with Severe Internal Injuries While In Custody, The Skanner – October 12, 2010
READ – Kyeron Fair: State Investigation Details Beating, Tasing of Teen in Mental Health Crisis, The Skanner – June 2, 2011

Fair, who had no prior history of mental illness, began acting extremely erratically. Fair remembers almost nothing from this time, but when his mother visited him, she noted that he was jittery, wouldn’t make eye contact, and kept repeating the phrase, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. Can they hear me? Can they hear me?”

He refused to eat or drink for three days, believing his food had been poisoned. He apparently became aggressive with staffers, who called MCDC on September 17, 2010, to have him transferred back to the adult jail because they couldn’t handle him. The juvenile center staff also feared he was suicidal, though that was not told to the MCDC officers who came to pick him up in a detention center van.

The local detention centers are used to dealing with people suffering from mental illness. Oregon’s jail and prison system is the state’s largest provider of mental health care—20 percent of the inmates who spend time at the Multnomah County Detention Center have a serious mental illness diagnosis ["The Criminalization of Mental Illness," Feature, Jan 14, 2010].

Six to eight juvenile detention center staffers escorted the teenager, whose feet and hands were cuffed, out of the juvenile facility. During the transfer from juvie to MCDC, and eventually to Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), Fair repeatedly flopped on the ground—screaming at and kicking officers.

When Fair did not respond to officers’ orders during the transfer to the hospital, instead playing peek-a-boo with the officers by pulling his shirt over his face, MCDC officers decided to Taser him twice, and then use a series of straps to bind his arms, shoulders, and legs to a gurney, a tactic known as a “four-point restraint.”

Fair eventually spent 20 days in the hospital, mostly while shackled or handcuffed and allowed only one phone call a day from his mom, as his behavior fluctuated from paranoid to near-comatose. Exams revealed no drugs in his system except cannabis, and showed no injuries except air pockets that had formed under the skin of Fair’s face, neck, and chest—a strange condition that could occur spontaneously or be caused by physical trauma. On October 11, 2010, Fair was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and transferred to the Children’s Farm Home, a juvenile mental health treatment center.

When state police investigators wrote up a 1,100-page use-of-force report about the case months later, one of the few memories Fair relayed was that an officer pounded on his chest in the hospital, calling him stupid. Reviews of the state report found that “there is no basis for the conclusion that the individual was criminally assaulted by anyone.”

For the county, state, and city, Fair’s case is closed as he heads to jail.

But for his family, questions linger that no court will ever answer. What exactly happened during the days Fair doesn’t remember? And what will happen when he returns behind bars?

From The Skanner News, August 31, 2011

Case of Kyeron Fair, charged with Measure 11 for being present during robbery, again put in limbo

Kyeron Fair (Photo: The Skanner News)

Kyeron Fair, 18, was taken by his family to Providence Behavioral Health in Portland Tuesday and admitted for treatment.

Fair’s court-appointed attorney, Gary Bertoni, had been negotiating with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, discussing a possible plea deal. The attorney was pushing for an 8-month jail sentence for charges that Fair was present during the armed robbery of an alleged pot dealer, Fair’s mother told The Skanner News.

In his original Measure 11 charges, Fair was not suspected of holding a gun or driving a getaway car, but rather accompanying others who did, documents in an Oregon State Internal Excessive Force Investigation into his injuries show.

Since his release on bail last February, Fair – who has no prior legal record — has followed through with counseling, parole hearings, court dates and drug tests, in addition to enrolling at Grant High School for Fall, 2011. His arrest and subsequent physical and mental health problems caused him to miss what would have been his senior year at Parkrose High School.

Throughout, he has maintained that he did not participate in the alleged robbery, and that he could not remember exactly how he ended up in the ICU. Now, his mother says, he is beginning to remember being hit in the chest by uniformed individuals while belted down to a restraint chair.

“The pressure of these plea negotiations was just too much,” his mother, Kelli Jarrell, told The Skanner News. “Eight months? For what? He never hurt anybody. They are nickel-and-diming him.

“Now he doesn’t know what day it is, you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him,” Jarrell said.

She added that it appears the county will not pay any of the cost of Fair’s medical treatment for his injuries, incurred at the hands of deputies while he was in custody, and that she is being held responsible for them.

County DA’s Office: ‘Not Beaten by Jailers’

Multnomah County Chief Deputy District Attorney Norm Frink Wednesday stressed that Fair had not been “beaten by jailers,” and that the Multnomah County investigation into the incident showed that staff did not act inappropriately.

“A criminal investigation was done regarding whether this man was, quote, beaten by jailers, and it was found that there was no wrongdoing in this case.

“Before you go around saying he was ‘beaten by jailers,’ you may want to look at that,”  Frink said.

He added that it is too early in the case to determine how Fair’s mental state will play out in criminal proceedings.

“I cannot comment on his case specifically but as a general proposition, psychological issues can play out in a number of ways.

“Not commenting on a specific case, those issues may lead us to determine that prosecution is not appropriate, it might be appropriate for mental health court,” he said.

Frink offered to allow The Skanner News to examine the county’s investigation report for the first time. He declined to comment on the Oregon State Police investigation completed earlier this year by Oregon State Police Det. Scott Sudaisar and Multnomah County Sheriffs Det. James Eriksen.

Oddly, county officials have repeatedly told other media that no state report exists, including at least one weekly newspaper that filed a Freedom of Information Act request earlier this year.

Oregon State Rep. Lew Frederick and Sen. Chip Shields, as well as staff members for Rep. Mike Dembrow and U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer, spent weeks last year trying to determine how Fair was injured, when he was injured, and by whom, as Multnomah County officials stonewalled their inquiries.

State Investigation: Fair Injured During Mental Health Crisis

Records contained within the more than 1,000-page state police investigation show that Fair was Tazed by Multnomah County Sheriffs Deps. Mindy De Armond and Gordon Glasser simultaneously (Glasser reported he used two cycles), as they forced him out of his isolation cell to transport him from the Multnomah County Detention Center to OHSU on Sept. 18.

Documents show Fair was carried out of the juvenile jail by half a dozen staff members, his wrists and ankles shackled, then dumped out onto the pavement outside the facility. After some struggle by the teenager, followed by curses and threats by MCDC Deputy Tim Barker, Fair was picked up off the pavement and alternately dragged, dropped, punched in the legs and pushed into the back of a transport van.

OHSU officials soon released him, charging that he was “faking” his mental illness and that his physical symptoms were not significant. However blood tests by a jailhouse nurse in the days following showed an increasing infection somewhere in his body, and he was readmitted.

OHSU staff then found extensive air pockets in his head and chest, which have caused confusion for officials trying to figure out what happened.

The jail nurse who examined him from Sept. 20-23 repeatedly stated that it could not have been caused by Tazing, but probably resulted from blunt force trauma to the chest, according to the state report.

The air pockets were the direct reason he stayed in the ICU for so many days — a stay that led to a systemic infection caused by a catheter that went unchanged “for too long,” the MCDC nurse told investigators.

Cause: Blunt Force Trauma?

State investigators asked the MCDC nurse about the possible causes of the elevated infection levels and the air in the chest cavity. She said “…it was probably not caused by being Tazed, but could be caused by falling and hitting something or could be caused by the use of force during his custody,” the report says.

But the nurse went further in her testimony to state investigators.

“She said with information she heard about Fair, ‘slamming into the wall,’ this could have caused the air,” the state report says. “She said she wasn’t sure who she heard say that Fair was slamming himself into the wall.”

The report continues, “She said that Fair did not appear medically injured when he left to OHSU on the second visit and said she was surprised there was air in his chest cavity.”

The state report shows the incident was reviewed in Hazardous Incident Reports; four certificates confirming a ‘justified’ ruling are contained in the state document collection, including for Dets. Barker and DeArmond. No such certificate is included for Glasser.

Fair was eventually moved from the intensive care unit to Trillium Farm, a secure children’s mental health facility. There he received treatment for several weeks, during which his family was allowed to visit and his condition improved.

Then Multnomah County deputies took him back into custody at the treatment facility in late January of this year, lodging him in the same facility in which he was apparently injured while in custody.

From The Skanner News, June 2, 2011 – by Lisa Loving

On Sept. 13, 2010, Parkrose High School senior Kyeron Fair went to school. Within 24 hours he was incarcerated and in the middle of a nightmare so deep he couldn’t eat, sleep or track what was going on around him. The 17-year-old had no prior arrest record.

(Read The Skanner News’ previous reporting on the case, ‘Portland Teen Hospitalized With Severe Internal Injuries While in Custody’)

Criminal charges against Fair are scheduled for a settlement hearing this Friday, June 3, at the Multnomah County Justice Center. Meanwhile questions about what happened to him in custody have generated an 1,151-page Oregon State Internal Excessive Force Investigation, obtained by The Skanner News.

Arrested on charges he was present during the armed robbery of an alleged marijuana dealer – and hit with nearly a dozen gun charges himself even though the alleged victim told police Fair was not armed – the teen was arrested by the Portland Police Gang Squad, questioned at the adult jail before his parents even knew where he was and lodged at the Donald E. Long Center, where he began showing mental health problems within hours.

By the time a week had passed, Fair had been housed in the adult jail, Tasered, beaten, placed on suicide watch, “approved for strip-search,” dosed with anti-psychotic medications, and lodged in the OHSU cardiac intensive care unit in a catatonic state.

All that before being arraigned on any charges.

The Oregon State Police investigation into why a 17-year-old was hospitalized in an intensive care unit while in the custody of Multnomah County authorities was requested by state Rep. Lew Frederick, who spoke recently about Fair’s case on the floor of the Oregon legislature before passage of a law against incarcerating minors charged with Measure 11 crimes in adult facilities.

The investigation into county law enforcement, opened Oct. 13, 2010, was done by Oregon State Police Det. Scott Sudaisar and Multnomah County Sheriffs Det. James Eriksen.

Among the questions tackled in the state’s use of force investigation, three stand out: Did the teenager get the care he needed once he began showing signs of mental health crisis? Was he subject to unjustified use of force? And how did Fair end up in an ICU unit while in custody?

Measure 11 Charges

Fair started showing signs of mental agitation during the initial police interview at the MCDC.

On Aug. 31, 2010, a medical marijuana card holder named Martin Hensley called Portland Police to say three African American males entered his home, pulled a gun and robbed him of more than a pound of pot and $80.

Hensley said he could identify one of the men, by first name only: “K-Ron,” who, he said, was approximately 17-years-old. He said the two unidentified intruders – one of whom held a handgun during the robbery – were about 20-years-old.

On Sept. 13, Det. Robert Hollins of the Portland Police Gang Enforcement Team arrested Kyeron at school and took him to the MCDC, where he proceeded to question him about the incident without an attorney present and without his parents’ knowledge.

In his police report, Hollins said Kyeron rambled extensively, first implying he knew about the crime, then denying it, at times saying he knew who did it but that he “did not want to tell on his friends.” He said he’d bought pot from Hensley for months, but that the dealer was angry with him over a money dispute. He maintained throughout that he did not participate in the robbery.

After 45 minutes of questioning, Hollins wrote in his report, he put Kyeron back in a cell because he was “getting excited and animated.” After a break the questioning resumed – still without a lawyer present. After more than two hours, Hollins wrote, Fair demanded an attorney and the session ended with him trying to get up and leave the room. He was restrained and placed in a cell.

Half an hour later, Hollins wrote, he “learned” that Fair’s mother Kelli Jarrell was waiting in the Central Precinct lobby, and Hollins brought her up and allowed her to hug her son before he was booked.

Fair was charged with first and second degree robbery with a firearm – including separate charges on each for all five people who were in the house at the time of the alleged robbery — plus unlawful use of a weapon. All are Measure 11 counts involving use of a firearm, even though Fair was never said by the victim or witnesses to have held or used one in the alleged incident.

Juvenile Jail

Fair’s path to the ICU was bumpy and paved with officials denying he had a problem.

Many details of the conflicting medical opinions on his case – which played out over two trips to the hospital within several days – weren’t sorted out until Sudaisar and Eriksen conducted interviews with Trillium Family Services Children’s Farm Home staff weeks after Fair was admitted there and began to improve.

During his first two days in juvenile detention, Fair refused to eat any of his meals and remained isolated in his cell, the state report says. He was seen by Project Response, the mobile mental health crisis team for Multnomah County, on Sept. 16 and their recommendation was that he be hospitalized immediately.

“… however they expressed concern that he would likely injure himself if placed in shackles and handcuffs,” the state report says. A JDH staff member was assigned to watch him one-on-one through a two-way mirror in his cell.

The report says he began ranting about being watched and being recorded; he didn’t recognize his parents. Staff reported that he started shouting, for hours, words to the effect of: “I didn’t do it, they made me do it, they held a gun to my head.”

Fair tried to charge out of his cell whenever the door was opened; he wouldn’t cooperate with staff trying to check his physical health. At one point he hung his pillowcase around his neck, the report says, like an athlete wearing a towel to wipe sweat off his face – prompting staff to declare him a suicide risk.

Next the documents show that, as Fair was placed on suicide watch Sept. 18, an odd game of ‘hot potato’ broke out between the JDH manager and the MCDC manager.

Juvenile officials sought to get Fair moved out of the Donald E. Long Center because, they said, he was violent, disruptive, suicidal and they couldn’t handle him. Numerous interviews and records show that JDH officials thought the teenager was faking mental illness, despite reports from more than one mental health evaluator that his crisis was real.

JDH Customer Services Manager Craig Bachman directed his staff to call MCDC and arrange a transfer; at first MCDC Corrections Sgt. Michael Phelps refused.

The two agencies traded phone calls and memos for hours on Sept 19 before the JDH finally won out.

In the end, the state report says, MCDC officials were not filled in by JDH on the extent of Fair’s illness – and the fact he was on suicide watch – when he was transferred.

“Sergeant Phelps told us that Mr. Bachman told him the juvenile inmate was not suicidal but the form showed that he was on suicide watch,” the state report says.

Use of Force ‘Hot Spots’

Hotspots in the use of force against Fair date to his transport from MCDC to OHSU on Sept. 18.

Records show that Fair was Tased by Multnomah County Sheriffs Deps. Mindy De Armond and Gordon Glasser simultaneously (Glasser reported he used two cycles), as they forced him out of his isolation cell to transport him to the hospital.

Documents show Fair was carried out of the juvenile jail by half a dozen staff members, his wrists and ankles shackled, then dumped out onto the pavement outside the facility. After some struggle by the teenager, followed by curses and threats by MCDC Deputy Tim Barker, Fair was picked up off the pavement and alternately dragged, dropped, punched in the legs and pushed into the back of a transport van.

(The state report shows the incident was reviewed in Hazardous Incident Reports; four certificates confirming a ‘justified’ ruling are contained in the state document collection, including for Dets. Barker and DeArmond. No such certificate is included for Glasser.)

He was taken to OHSU, where blood tests showed traces of marijuana in his bloodstream. He remained combative to staff, who decided that his mental crisis was “behavioral” and soon sent him back to the MCDC. There he was given Geodone, Ativan, and Rispertal “to help with symptoms,” the report says.

There the psychiatric nurse practitioner continued to monitor the liver enzymes in his bloodstream – a general indicator of infection. After three days of gradual rise in the infection, she arranged to have him sent back to OHSU.

At OHSU the teenager was shackled by his arms and ankles to a hospital bed for days as, the report shows, doctors speculated — and his jailers at times gossiped — about how he had come to suffer air pockets under his skin from his head to his chest, and whether he was “faking” a mental breakdown.

Physical Injuries

What exactly led to air pockets in his chest and head is not firmly established in the state report. The jail nurse who examined him from Sept. 20-23 repeatedly states that it could not have been caused by Tasing, but probably resulted in blunt force trauma to the chest.

Nevertheless the air pockets were the direct reason he stayed in the ICU for so many days, a stay that led to a systemic infection caused by a catheter that went unchanged “for too long,” the MCDC nurse told investigators.

Much of his second stay at OHSU, Fair alternated between “catatonic” — completely unresponsive to anyone or anything around his bed – and screaming, thrashing fits. He remained cuffed to his bed at the wrists and ankles throughout.

State investigators asked the MCDC nurse about the elevated infection levels and the air in the chest cavity and the possible causes. She said “…it was probably not caused by being Tased, but could be caused by falling and hitting something or could be caused by the use of force during his custody,” the report says.

But the nurse went further in her testimony to state investigators.

“She said with information she heard about Fair ‘slamming into the wall,’ this could have caused the air,” the state report says. “She said she wasn’t sure who she heard that Fair was slamming himself into the wall.”

The report continues, “She said that Fair did not appear medically injured when he left to OHSU on the second visit and said she was surprised there was air in his chest cavity.”

State Police Report

The state report combines hundreds of documents from many jurisdictions gathered over the course of several months, from the original Portland Police reports on the alleged armed robbery that started it all, to the final reports filed at the Trillium Farm secure facility where Fair was sent to recuperate before court hearings and his release on bail last February.

Throughout the report, Fair’s mother Kelli Jarrell figures as a staunch advocate for her son, calling officials and staff, prodding them for information and services, even writing thank-you notes. The state report shows that two of those thank-you notes ended up in law enforcement files.

The report shows the juvenile, MCDC and OHSU officials’ consistent failure to inform the family on Fair’s status, his physical condition or even that he had been arrested — and hospitalized — in the first place.

“Kyeron’s mom is mostly concerned about the medical staffs, and corrections (at MCDC and JDH), inability to immediately recognize a mental health problem and obtain appropriate services immediately,” says a memo in the state report by Det. Sudaisar to Det. Eriksen.

“She is also concerned about the physical symptoms that were revealed while at OHSU the second time.

“She mentioned receiving a phone call that Kyeron had been transferred to ICU, but ‘the good news was that he was breathing on his own again.’ She lacks medical answers to these issues.”

Fair’s family has retained attorney Jason Kafoury to explore a lawsuit against area agencies involved in the teenager’s incarceration. His criminal charges are being fought by attorney Gary Bertoni, who was appointed on his behalf by the county.

Kyeron Fair

The family of Parkrose High School Senior Kyeron Fair heard yesterday that the teen – hospitalized in a cardiac intensive care unit while in Multnomah County law enforcement custody last year, then sent to a psychiatric facility after suffering a severe mental breakdown – may be offered bail early next week.

At his arraignment Tuesday afternoon, Fair’s bail was reduced from $3,055,000 to $50,000 within minutes of the start of his hearing. It is the first time official charges have been lodged against him in court since his arrest during the first week of school on Sept. 13, 2010.

His family, however, says they do not have the full $5,000 expected bail fee, and community members are working to come up with the money to ensure Fair’s release if possible. Anyone who wishes to contribute can contact The Skanner News office.

Bernie Foster – Publisher of The Skanner
503-285-5555
415 N. Killingsworth
Portland, OR 97217

On Tuesday, Fair’s government-appointed attorney, Gary Bertoni, entered a plea of not guilty to 14 felony charges of robbery, burglary and unauthorized use of a weapon.

Media have so far not been given access to police reports in the case to find out more about the alleged incident or incidents that led to the charges, but family members say the 17-year-old athlete has no previous arrest history, does not carry a weapon and has had no sign of mental health problems in the past.

Fair’s family and state lawmakers still have not been informed exactly who put the teen into a coma, how, and when, but his mother says he was not held in the general population at either the Donald E. Long Home or Multnomah County Detention Center, and had little or no contact with other prisoners.

State Rep. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, confirmed Wednesday that Multnomah County law enforcement agencies are still under criminal investigation in the case.

“From what I understand a state police investigation took place, and a District Attorney investigation is underway right now too that relates to how he was injured in custody,” he said.

“There are a number of people who have been notified about this because of people talking to the Attorney General’s office,” Frederick said.

“There was clearly a reaction in talking to a number of legislators down here about this, and I think there is going to be more going on down here as well.”

Fair’s mother Kelli Jarrell said government agencies and law enforcement bureaus involved in her son’s custody have failed to notify family members at key times throughout his ordeal in the system, including: when he was first taken into custody by a detective with the Portland Police Gang Enforcement Team, at Parkrose High School last September; when he was questioned by that detective without an attorney present while being held at MCDC in the Justice center downtown; when Fair was somehow severely injured while in custody and transported to Oregon Health and Science University; and again this week when a decision was made for sheriffs’ deputies to move him out of the psychiatric facility and put him back into jail.

Fair, who suffered a severe psychiatric breakdown after regaining consciousness at OHSU cardiac intensive care unit, had been held at the Trillium Farm secure psychiatric facility for juveniles near Corvallis since October, 2010.

Jarrell said his physical and mental health improved there, and that staff was supportive and friendly.

On Tuesday, Multnomah County Judge Julie E. Franz opted to move the 17-year-old’s arraignment up by a week, she said, to speed his opportunity for release.

She said officials had been looking into his ability to “aid and assist in his own defense,” as determined by doctors at Trillium Farm.

Reading from their probate report on Fair’s condition, Franz told the teen he suffered from an “undefined psychotic disorder” that has now been judged to be “in remission.”

“I’ve been very involved in your case,” she told Fair, who sat at the front of the courtroom with his hands and feet shackled. “How is your health today?”

“Good,” Fair said very quietly.

“Normally you would have been arraigned at the Justice Center,” Franz told Fair. “But because of the aid and assist issues, I’m arraigning you here to avoid your having to go to the Justice Center.”

As the judge met with attorneys in another room to discuss the bail issues, a Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy walked to the back of the court to speak with Jarrell, who waited with her daughter Diamond and toddler grandson.

“He is such a pleasure,” the deputy told Jarrell. “Every day when I come to work, I look forward to it because of him,” the deputy said, gesturing toward Fair.

After the meeting in chambers Franz said both attorneys had agreed to reducing the bail, but that officials would conduct a “close street review” before Fair’s release, which could not be done sooner than Monday, Feb. 7.

She set a trial date of March 1 for Fair’s criminal charges.

Kyeron Fair

Portland-area lawmakers are spearheading an investigation into why 17-year-old Kyeron Fair was hospitalized in an intensive care unit while in the custody of Multnomah County law enforcement last month.

The youth suffered a nervous breakdown and severe psychiatric problems – as well as unexplained internal injuries — after being arrested at Parkrose High School for Measure 11 crimes including armed robbery and burglary.

Kyeron, who reportedly spent as long as two weeks chained to a bed at Oregon Health and Sciences University with a sheriff’s guard at the door, was finally transferred Monday night to the Trillium Farm children’s unit operated by Washington County Mental Health near Corvallis.

However, Oregon State Rep. Lew Frederick and Sen. Chip Shields, as well as staff members for Rep. Mike Dembrow and U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer, have spent the past week trying to determine how Fair was injured, when, and by whom.

Shields said Monday an investigation into Fair’s internal injuries, which his parents say included liver damage, “is progressing.”

The parents say Kyeron has never been in trouble with law enforcement before and the Portland Police confirmed he has no arrest record. The police bureau also confirmed that he has yet to be adjudicated or brought before a judge for any crimes.

Attorney Greg Kafoury confirmed that his office has agreed to investigate the case and is sending a tort claim notice, although he declined to specify Friday who would be named in the legal action.

Kyeron’s family says the teen – who in fact has been hospitalized twice since his arrest — was never put into the general population at either the adult or the juvenile facilities where he has been held.

Neither the Multnomah County Sheriffs Department, the Portland Police, or a spokesman for Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogan would comment for the record on what exactly happened to the student.

“I’ve talked with folks at the city and the county, they’re continuing their investigations, both of them,” Rep. Frederick said Friday. “The city believes the young fellow was in fact anxious because they were looking at charging him with a Measure 11 crime, the county is looking into the situation regarding the injuries that he sustained as well as how he might have been treated regarding any sort of mental breakdown.”

“He’s never been away from home this long in his life,” his mother Kelli Jarrell told the Skanner News. “He doesn’t really know what happened to him.”

Jarrell, a medical professional, says she and Kyeron’s father, Gail Fair, have spent weeks trying to find out the status of his case and the source of his injuries.

They say the combination of Measure 11 charges, and physical and mental health crisis, have created a battle of jurisdictions between the school, the juvenile authorities, the Portland Police, the Multnomah County jail, and the hospital – and nobody’s talking about what happened.

“If, as a parent, I took my child into the ER (emergency room) with internal injuries and acute psychosis, and I said I didn’t know what happened, I would be in jail,” Jarrell says. “This is beyond ridiculous.”

His parents say that because Kyeron is a basketball player, first at Jefferson High School and then at Parkrose, they have complete physical examination records showing he was perfectly healthy until his arrest one month ago.

Monday night, Jarrell says, Trillium staff expressed shock at how his body has atrophied from the past month’s round of injuries and incarceration.

The parents say their odyssey to find out what happened to their son after he left for school on the morning of Sept. 13 has been a nightmare.

About an hour after Kyeron, a high school senior, walked out his front door, Jarrell received a cell phone call from Kyeron’s older sister, who said Kyeron’s best friend called her to say he had been arrested at school.

Jarrell and Fair say Parkrose High School never notified them that Kyeron was taken into custody on school grounds. Rep. Frederick, who spent years as the public information officer at Portland Public Schools, says other districts have a notification policy in such instances, and Parkrose’s lack of parental notification is troubling.

Parkrose School Superintendent Dr. Karen Fischer Gray’s secretary declined to take a call from the media, instead referring questions to Parkrose Principal Ana A. Gonzalez; no one at the school answered telephones Thursday, and its voicemail system was full.

Emails to the superintendent, the principal, and three vice principals of the school have so far gone unanswered.

Unable to get any information from the school, Jarrell says she left a message on the Portland Police non-emergency line to try to track down where Kyeron was, and then jumped in her car and started driving to the Northeast Precinct office.

She says a manager at the precinct office made phone calls on her behalf, locating Kyeron downtown at the Multnomah County Detention Center in the Justice Center on Southwest Third Avenue. Jarrell says she immediately drove downtown, where she was made to wait for an hour and a half before finding out Kyeron’s status.

A Portland Police spokeswoman confirms Kyeron was being questioned by Det. Robert Hollins, while his mother waited outside.

Jarrell alleges that Hollins was questioning her son without an attorney; the police spokeswoman says the session between the teen and Hollins was cordial, and that Hollins stretched the rules to allow Jarrell to visit Kyeron in his cell and hug him goodbye before he was sent to the Donald E. Long Home.

Jarrell says she is still trying to determine how long Kyeron was questioned before her attorney was able to halt the proceedings via telephone. “He had not eaten, he was not cognizant, not talking with complete thought processes,” Jarrell says.

Kyeron was that day transported to the Donald E. Long Home, but what happened after that remains unclear.

Jarrell and Fair say they were notified Sept. 20 that Kyeron was at Oregon Health and Sciences University’s cardiac intensive care unit with internal injuries.

They maintain that they were never notified by juvenile authorities or the sheriffs’ office that their son had been transported to the hospital. Later they found out he had been to OHSU before, then released and transported back to MCDC’s medical ward, before being brought unconscious to the OHSU intensive care unit.
Jarrell said the juvenile authorities insist Kyeron was not injured when he left their facility.

“If he was transported to the big jail, then who was the guard? I don’t know how they couldn’t know what happened, but that’s what we’re getting,” Jarrell said. “Now he’s at least going to be getting some treatment, it’s kind of far away, but at least he’ll be away from the guards.”

“There are two issues. Is he getting the care he needs now? My sense is, he is,” Shields said this week.

“The policy issue is sending young juveniles to jail to begin with,” he said. Shields cited an upcoming study by the nonprofit Partnership for Safety and Justice that describes Oregon’s policy on housing youth in adult jails such as MCDC as “inconsistent and contradictory.”

The report, Reconsidering Oregon’s Detention Policy for Youth Charged with Measure 11, cites statistics showing 18 percent of all youth arrested and held in pre-trial confinement before trial were never convicted of an adult crime. Half of those who were charged pled guilty to a non-Measure 11 crime that “would not have required them to be in the adult system if they had been charged with that in the first place.”

“In other words, young people are exposed to the hazards of adult jails because they are initially charged with a Measure 11 offense – and exposed to conditions that might lead to future criminal behavior – even though a majority of these youth will not be convicted of a Measure 11 crime,” the report says.

Multnomah County juvenile justice officials were unavailable for immediate comment, as they were in Eugene this week attending the annual Oregon Juvenile Justice Symposium.