'HUFFING' SUSPECTED IN DEATH

Youth May Have Been Inhaling Freon Taken From Air Conditioner

FORT WORTH - An 18-year-old found dead Tuesday morning behind his Fort
Worth home with a plastic bag over his head may have been inhaling Freon
before his death, police officials said.

Family members said Danny C. Poole was last seen alive about 11:30 p.m.
Monday by one of his brothers at the family's home in the 2400 block of
Yeager Street. His father found the teen's body about 8:30 a.m.

"His dad walked in the back yard this morning and saw him in a chair back
there," said homicide Sgt. Skeeter Anderson, who arrived at the teen's home
to discover that the victim was a former neighbor he had watched grow up.

Although investigators are awaiting autop-sy results, Anderson said, they
think Poole may have been "huffing" Freon because of the plastic bag and
because an air conditioner had been tampered with.

Huffing is the act of inhaling fumes that produce mind-altering effects and
behavioral changes.

"I still don't believe this," the teen's father, Billy Poole, said Tuesday.
"I've had talks with my boy. This is just stupid. It doesn't make sense to
me, but it happens. He was a very pretty young boy. He had his whole life
ahead of him."

Police say inhalant abuse is seen mostly among younger teens. The average
age of first use of inhalants is 12.2, according to a 2000 study of Texas
secondary students by the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

Billy Poole said he had asked his son if he was huffing Freon after the
home's air conditioner unit kept running low on the cooling agent.

"I had asked him because the man who services my unit said a lot of kids
were doing that nowadays," Poole said.

But Danny Poole had denied it.

Cautious anyway, Billy Poole said, he wrapped tape around part of the air
conditioner to keep anyone out. On Tuesday morning, police found that the
tape had been disturbed.

"This isn't the way I wanted to find out," Billy Poole said.

Dr. Jim Cox, an emergency physician at Harris Methodist Fort Worth
hospital, said teens abuse inhalants to get high.

"What happens is they become hypoxic, which is low oxygen. Particularly if
you have a plastic bag over your head filled with freon, where's the
oxygen? It's not there."

Cox said the lack of oxygen fills the teen with a euphoric sensation, "but
that's on the way to death."

"There's not a lot of in between that we've seen with this," Cox said.
"You're either dead or you're damaging yourself."

Billy Poole said his son was a former Eastern Hills High School student who
planned to return to school in the fall and liked to oil paint. He said he
suspects that someone may have been with his son at the time of his death.

"Danny was a very loving, easygoing boy who liked to follow the crowd,"
Billy Poole said. "He always wanted to be part of the crowd. That's what
upsets me about all this. ... There might have been time for me to call an
ambulance."

Anderson said that police are looking into the possibility that others
could have been present but that they had no indication of that Tuesday.

Billy Poole said he hoped other parents will read about his son's death and
make sure their own children aren't huffing. Among the red flags are low
levels of Freon in air conditioners when there is no detectable leak, and
remnants of plastic garbage bags in the yard, he said.

"My little Danny. My buddy. I don't have him no more," Poole said, his
voice cracking. "Somehow I'm going to get this message out to the kids, if
I've got to walk up and down the street. They've got to quit doing this.
They've got to quit doing this."