MOTHER'S LOSS SPURS CHANGES IN LAW

Almost six years after her son's death, a Topeka woman feels as if she
finally has put him to rest.

"At first, and probably for a long time, people thought I was just a
ranting, raving, grieving mother," Sara Born said. "This became my life.
This is what I ate and breathed for five years. But now I realize that I
need to learn to let go and heal."

Born's son Chad Cantor died May 14, 1994. He had driven to a convenience
store in Mullins, S.C., where he lived, and told the clerk he needed police
assistance. But when officers arrived, Cantor appeared to be "confused and
disoriented" and wouldn't exit his pickup truck, according to police reports.

Officers sprayed pepper spray into the truck's cab after breaking a small
vent window, reports indicated. Cantor then exited his vehicle and ran down
the street.

A videotape recorder mounted inside a patrol car captured part of the
incident, but Born said her son ran outside the camera's view, where he was
caught by six officers from the Mullins Police Department, Marion County
Sheriff's Department and the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

Cantor, 23, who was 6 feet tall and weighed a well-muscled 230 pounds,
reportedly struggled with officers, who handcuffed him and held him to the
ground. Police reports indicate that officers then turned him over and
noticed he wasn't breathing.

Emergency personnel responded but failed to resuscitate Cantor. An autopsy
report, noting methamphetamine in Cantor's blood, concluded Cantor died
from an overdose.

But during Born's countless trips and phone calls to South Carolina, she
learned something new that authorities hadn't said before.

"Just from what they were telling me, I knew things were wrong," she said.
"To look at the situation, it probably did call for some sort of force, but
I don't think they knew what they were doing. If they had, I don't think it
would have ended like this."

Born took a copy of the autopsy report to Dr. George Thomas, then a Shawnee
County coroner, who noted an error that increased the reported
methamphetamine level in Cantor's blood by about 100 times.

At a coroner's inquest in Mullins, S.C., in March 1995, the patrol car
videotape was played and showed that Cantor had been held to the ground for
up to two minutes before he was rolled on his back.

Examiners rewrote the autopsy report to show that Cantor had died of
methamphetamine toxicity along with positional asphyxia, or suffocation,
because of the position of or force upon a body.

"Any position that screws up your breathing can do it," Thomas said last
week. "When you can't move your diaphragm, you've only got a few minutes."

Born filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April 1996 against the three law
enforcement agencies that responded to the convenience store. As a result
of that lawsuit, the South Carolina Highway Patrol and Marion County and
Mullins law enforcement agencies were ordered in January 1999 to ensure
their officers are trained in the proper use of pepper spray, know the
risks of positional asphyxia, can perform CPR and promptly get medical help
for offenders in distress.

"With very combative people, there's sometimes no other way to control them
than to hog-tie them," Topeka police Sgt. Chuck Haggard said. "Sudden death
syndrome is not a totally understood phenomenon, but part of what kills
people is the mechanism in your body that keeps you going past the point of
exhaustion -- past where a normal person would go."

Their bodies can't take the stress so they stop functioning, Haggard said.
And using a structured tier of low-to-high force techniques, Haggard
teaches officers the characteristics to spot in suspects that could
foreshadow imminent death, which include paranoia, profuse sweating,
incoherent speech and extended violent struggling, he said.

"We want our officers to recognize people who could die in our custody," he
said, stressing that candidates usually are high on drugs. "We try to stop
extended struggles as soon as possible."

Born said she knows the officers who arrested her son didn't mean him any
harm. But her march to change how they deal with those situations was
something she doesn't want anyone to forget.

"I never believed they pulled up and said, 'Let's kill this young man,' "
she said. "And I knew all along that I'd never bring him back, but this
fight made his death bearable. It makes me feel good that the facts of his
death are being used in a good way."