MAN CALLED GENTLE SOUL, PSYCHOTIC

Police and Witnesses Disagree on Death in Prince George's Holding Cell

At precisely 2:18 a.m., Elmer Clayton Newman Jr. picked up a phone inside
his Suitland apartment and called 911. Someone was inside the home, he told
the operator. Send the police.

Two Prince George's County patrol officers sped to the apartment that
morning, Sept. 22. For reasons that still aren't clear, they arrested
Newman and took him to a police station in Oxon Hill, where they confined
him in a holding cell.

About 90 minutes later, Newman, 29, collapsed on the cell floor, still
bound in handcuffs. Paramedics could not revive him as they rushed to Fort
Washington Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Five months later, exactly what led to Newman's death is still a mystery.

The state medical examiner has ruled Newman's death a homicide, authorities
disclosed this week for the first time. The official cause was a
complicated one, but boiled down to this: death brought on by a cocaine
overdose but also neck and chest injuries that he sustained while in police
custody.

The FBI and Prince George's prosecutors are still investigating and will
decide whether police officers acted properly or if criminal charges should
be filed.

The police describe Newman as a psychotic deluded by cocaine who assaulted
several officers for no apparent reason. Any injuries he may have suffered
were his own fault, they said, because he fought with officers and later
slammed his head in a drug-induced rage against the wall of his cell.

But one witness gave a much different account, saying that Newman offered
no physical resistance when he was arrested. Moreover, an attorney
representing his family said that police kicked Newman in the stomach and
beat him with batons and that they were slow to summon medical help.

Newman's relatives said in interviews yesterday that they don't understand
how a man they portrayed as a gentle soul wound up as a homicide victim
because he called 911.

"I would like to know what happened to my brother," said Tanya Jenkins, one
of Newman's two older sisters. "From the beginning, we knew something was
wrong. But [the police] won't tell us anything. We just want some answers,
and we're tired of waiting."

Seven officers who had contact with Newman were placed on leave after his
death, as is routine in such cases, but are scheduled to return to
administrative duties today, said Royce D. Holloway, a police spokesman.

The officers' actions are still under investigation, and Holloway said he
didn't know why they were being allowed to return to work. He identified
them as Sgt. Randall S. Mathews, Cpl. Fred Brockington, Cpl. Stacy Hampton,
Cpl. Andre Hancock and Officers Carl Copeland, Edward Finn and Jason Johnson.

Police said that when they arrived at Newman's apartment, which he shared
with his girlfriend in the 4400 block of Rena Road in Suitland, there was
no intruder and no break-in, contrary to what they said Newman had told the
911 operator.

Instead, they said, Newman rushed two officers and attacked them with his
fists. After subduing him with pepper spray, police handcuffed Newman and
charged him with assaulting an officer.

"There was a very violent struggle and force was applied," said Police
Chief John S. Farrell. "This man was huge - I mean huge as in the 300-pound
range. You're talking about tremendous strength."

But a neighbor who witnessed Newman's encounter with the police said he did
not put up a struggle at all.

Dorothy McKinney, 65, whose apartment is directly across a stairwell from
Newman's, said she was awakened by a loud knocking on Newman's door. She
said she looked out the peephole of her front door and saw Newman sprawled
on his stomach on the floor, with his hands cuffed behind his back and an
officer's foot on his neck.

"He was screaming, 'What did I do? What did I do?' He must have said it 50
times," McKinney said. "But from what I witnessed with my eyes, that young
man was not offering any resistance. He wasn't fighting them at all. In
fact, he was being very submissive."

McKinney said that she did not see the police mistreat Newman and that he
did not appear to be injured or hurt.

At some point while he was in police custody, however, Newman suffered neck
and chest injuries severe enough that they contributed to his death,
according to the autopsy.

Police declined to release the autopsy report itself, saying the case was
still under review. They also refused to disclose the tape recording of the
911 call.

Christopher A. Griffiths, an attorney for Newman's family, said other
unnamed witnesses saw police beat Newman with their fists and batons after
he was arrested. He said police left Newman in the holding cell in an
twisted position on his stomach, cuffed by his wrists and ankles, and were
slow to get medical help even though he was gasping for air.

"He was hogtied," Griffiths said. "The police refused to provide him with
medical care. They let him suffocate in that jail cell."

Police at the Oxon Hill District station called 911 at 3:25 a.m. and
requested an ambulance for "a prisoner on PCP," according to dispatch
records obtained by The Washington Post under the Maryland Public
Information Act. An ambulance crew was on the scene within four minutes,
the records show.

At 4:11 a.m. - 46 minutes after the police called 911 - the ambulance crew
radioed the dispatcher to report that it was on the way to Fort Washington
Hospital with a patient in cardiac arrest.

More than 500 people attended Newman's funeral two weeks later at First
Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover. Mourners wore yellow ribbons
with a snapshot of Newman and a tag that read: "No weapon formed against me
shall prosper."

"I just want to know why he's dead," said his mother, Clarcy Newman, 57, of
Capitol Heights. "What did he do? I still have no clue - no clue - after
five months. And that hurts."