‘He thinks everyone is trying to kill him,’ foster dad told 911, seeking help for Lofton

When Cedric Lofton’s foster father called 911, he alerted authorities that the teenager was having a mental health crisis, audio of the call shows.

“He’s really really paranoid,” the foster father told 911 on Sept. 24. “Like, he thinks that everyone is trying to kill him. He thinks that there’s someone — he’s been thinking that for about a month now.”

Authorities’ knowledge of Lofton’s mental state has become a key issue in the circumstances surrounding his death.

It was the second 911 call in as many days by the concerned foster father, who said the 17-year-old had been displaying signs of paranoia for a month and having “schizophrenic episodes.” He asked for a police escort for Lofton to the county’s mental health center or a hospital for an evaluation.

Instead, Wichita police forcibly removed Lofton from the porch of his foster home, and — after he resisted — bound his body in a wrap restraint system and took him to Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center on charges of battering an officer.

There, Lofton again resisted physical restraints and was held face down in a holding cell for nearly 45 minutes by four county employees. At some point, he lost consciousness from a lack of oxygen and his heart stopped beating. He was resuscitated and died two days later.

Audio of the 911 call has amplified criticism of police handling of Lofton.

Gov. Laura Kelly, activists and some local elected officials have said Lofton shouldn’t have been taken to JIAC. The decision to do so was a key turning point in Lofton’s nearly five-hour interaction with law enforcement and corrections staff on Sept. 24.

A Wichita police officer later told investigators that police did not have a “baseline” to determine whether Lofton had mental health issues when they booked him into the county’s juvenile intake facility.

In the emergency call, Lofton’s foster father explained that the teenager was having “a mental breakdown” and believed “government agents” would kill him as a result of the foster father’s 911 call, audio shows. He said he was told by a foster care case worker that he couldn’t let Lofton back into his home until he had a mental health evaluation.

“The more facts we get, the less sense it makes,” said Pastor Maurice Evans, a spokesperson for Lofton’s biological family, after The Eagle shared the 911 recording with him. “Nobody called for any kind of mental health assistance. They could have called EMS. They could have called for an ambulance. They could have done a lot of things differently all the way through, but they never did.”

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett declined to prosecute anyone involved in Lofton’s death, saying they are immune under the state’s “stand your ground” law. But Bennett was critical of how authorities handled Lofton, suggesting multiple policy changes and saying he’s committed to preventing “a tragedy of this magnitude from happening again.”

Wichita and Sedgwick County officials have appointed a joint city-county task force to review the circumstances surrounding Lofton’s death and any state, county and city policies that should be changed. Its first meeting is Thursday.

Last month, Bennett said that Wichita police did not directly contribute to Lofton’s death. But he questioned whether it was the right decision to take him to JIAC instead of a medical facility.

Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell last week asked the Kansas legislature to consider a change in state law that would require law enforcement officers to take a person in mental or physical duress for a medical evaluation before taking them to jail or JIAC.

But Kansas law already requires law enforcement officers to take someone who has been placed into protective custody — such as Lofton — for a suspected mental illness to a medical facility instead of jail, Eagle research found.

The law, K.S.A. 59-2953, says an officer “shall transport the person to a treatment facility where the person shall be examined by a physician or psychologist on duty at the treatment facility” and “no person (who has been determined to be mentally ill) shall be detained by a law enforcement officer . . . in a nonmedical facility used for the detention of persons charged with or convicted of a crime.”

Bennett said in a written statement that state law also gives officers the discretion “to assess and reassess facts as a situation unfolds.”

“The WPD officers had the discretion to change their approach and take Cedric into custody for the crime of battery of a law enforcement officer,” Bennett wrote.

Wichita police and city officials have declined to comment publicly on the decision, saying they’re waiting for the task force to complete its three-month review. Bennett said Wichita police officers on the scene were split. Some thought Lofton should go to a hospital, but a supervisor decided he should go to JIAC on criminal charges.

A Wichita police officer reportedly told investigators they took him to JIAC instead of a medical facility because “he could not tell if Cedric had mental health issues without some baseline to which to compare his behavior,” according to a report released by Bennett last month.

A Wichita police sergeant who authorized Lofton’s transport to JIAC said “he believed Cedric was too combative to take to the hospital,” according to Bennett’s report.

Evans said Lofton did not become combative until Wichita police initiated physical contact with the teen and that he should have been treated like a mental health patient, not a criminal.

“Why was Cedric criminalized immediately,” he said. “It’s not a crime to be a foster child. It’s not a crime to have a mental health crisis. It’s not a crime to be Black. But all of these things worked against Cedric to his death. He really wasn’t wrong talking about government agents trying to kill him because that’s exactly what happened to him.”

Evans said the 911 call opens questions about why there was such a heavy police presence at the foster home.

“Suddenly, eleven officers showed up,” Evans said. “Doesn’t that seem weird? To someone who’s not armed, for someone who’s a child — that’s a strange response. And for it to turn so violent, so quickly, for a torture device to be used so readily. . . . There’s a whole lot of stuff going on here, and none of it makes sense.”

Between the 911 calls and body camera footage released by the city, Evans said it’s apparent the Wichita police department did not take Lofton’s mental state into consideration.

“They started cussing, they started yelling, they started fighting,” Evans said. “Instead of being professionals of law enforcement, they became bullies.”

“And I promise you if it wasn’t Cedric Lofton but it was Jenny Lipschitz that this happened to — a blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl — I promise you we wouldn’t be here this many months afterwards having any kind of conversation like this.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 2:52 PM.