KBI releases new details about teen who died after being restrained at juvenile facility
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Death of Wichita teen at Sedgwick County facility
Cedric Lofton’s foster father called authorities in September 2021 seeking help because the 17-year-old was hallucinating and needed to go to a mental health facility. Instead, police took him to the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center, where he had to be resuscitated after he was held facedown for more than 30 minutes during an altercation. He died two days later.
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The Kansas Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday night released new details about what happened to a 17-year-old boy leading up to the time he was restrained and lost consciousness while in the custody of a Wichita juvenile detention facility.
The teen, identified Tuesday as Cedric “CJ” Lofton of Wichita, was immediately taken to a Wichita hospital after becoming unresponsive and died there Sunday — two days after authorities say he was handcuffed after assaulting staff at the Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center, 700 S. Hydraulic in Wichita. When he was brought into the center by Wichita police earlier Friday morning, he had been restrained with a WRAP restraint system.
But authorities said Monday that the device had been removed some time before the boy lost consciousness. Wichita police spokesman Charley Davidson went as far to say Monday that the boy was “upright and communicating” when WPD officers left him at the facility and in the care of the center’s staff. The Wichita Police Department’s policy on use of the WRAP restraints says they “will only be applied for only the amount of time absolutely necessary.”
It remains unclear whether the restraints played any role in Lofton’s death. Exactly how the boy died remained under investigation following an autopsy conducted Monday, the KBI said in a news release.
“The coroner has not ruled on the cause of death after the preliminary autopsy,” KBI spokeswoman Melissa Underwood told The Eagle by email. “It remains pending the final autopsy report which will include additional information such as toxicology results.”
It could take weeks before investigators receive the results of a toxicology screening, which would detect a variety of substances in a person’s body at the time of death.
Meanwhile on Tuesday as the KBI probe was ongoing, a local youth justice organization, Progeny, called for authorities to conduct “a transparent and thorough investigation” into Lofton’s death, and a local pastor had set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for the boy’s family.
The KBI said Tuesday night in the release that the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office asked it to investigate what happened to the boy around 10:30 a.m. Friday — several hours after he reportedly became unconscious while restrained.
According to a narrative provided in the KBI news release:
Wichita police officers responded to a disturbance call at a house in the 1200 block of South Fox Run around 1 a.m. Friday and found Lofton outside of the house “behaving erratically” and acting paranoid. The officers spent “an extended period of time trying to convince him to voluntarily seek mental health treatment” but ended up trying to take the teen into custody after their attempts were unsuccessful.
The teen “resisted by assaulting the officers” and after what the KBI described as a “physical struggle,” the officers arrested Lofton on suspicion of four counts of battery of a law enforcement officer.
The Wichita officers took Lofton to the county’s Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center in a WRAP restraint system, “a device used to prevent subjects from hurting themselves or others.”
After arriving at the center, authorities removed the WRAP restraint and handcuffs from the teen and put him in a single holding cell.
Some time later, Lofton was let out of the cell to use the restroom.
When a center staff member tried to escort the teen back to the cell, he allegedly assaulted the staff member.
The attack led multiple corrections staff members to engage “in a lengthy physical struggle” with Lofton “to get him into the holding cell and place him into handcuffs.”
“Once Lofton was under control, corrections staff were monitoring him and noticed he became unresponsive,” the release says.
It’s unclear from the narrative exactly how long the teen was unconscious before staff noticed his state and began life-saving measures. The KBI did not provide specific times for these events or exactly how long the teen spent in restraints and what times they were removed when The Eagle asked for that information. Underwood said only that the “exact timeline of events will be investigated and documented as a part of this investigation,” which “is currently ongoing.”
Sedgwick County Emergency Medical Services personnel responded to the center and took Lofton to Wesley Medical Center, “where additional medical interventions were attempted,” the release says.
The boy died at 1:55 a.m. Sunday. It’s unknown whether he ever regained consciousness.
The KBI said Tuesday that the investigation into the Lofton’s death is ongoing but declined to release any additional information about the case.
Under Kansas law, the agency is responsible for investigating all in-custody deaths that occur in the state’s jails and prisons unless the person was regularly under the care of a physician, or an autopsy determines the death occurred from natural causes.
This story was originally published September 28, 2021 at 9:54 PM.
