The Complexities Of Isaiah Trammell

An Ohio case resides at the intersection of mental health, police work, legality, bleeding heart liberalism, and what it means to do a job.

Isaiah was an autistic late-teenager in Ohio. He seems to be living by himself at the beginning of the video I’ll link you in a second, but he recently got laid off or fired from Wal-Mart, so he is concerned about retaining the apartment. He seems to be concerned about a lot of things, actually — when the cops arrive, he says he recently had a phone fight with both his mother and his uncle. At one point, he says he hasn’t a good life and “doesn’t see anything good coming.” (I think sadly many of us have felt that way a few times.) Now, he does have an interview the next day at McDonald’s, but here comes the problem: the cops run his name, and he has a domestic warrant against him. I have read that said warrant was for a domestic on his mother, but I don’t know if that’s accurate. Because he has this warrant, the cops need to bring him in — if they didn’t bring him in, it would be a dereliction of duty.

But, the McDonald’s interview is early in the morning.

So when Isaiah learns that he will be taken to jail and kept overnight, he starts to steadily lose it, because he’s going to miss this interview in the morning. Once he gets to the jail, he loses it even more, and rams his head into the cell wall a couple of times, which does create some noticeable bruising. At one point, two “mental health counselors,” who to me appear just to be 30-something blond women in Crocs, come over and talk to him through the cell, but finally decide they’re “through” with him. He’s still being disruptive, so the cops put him in a retainer chair, and he’s screaming and still being disruptive.

Eventually, he seems to fade out (pass out?) and he is transported to a hospital in Dayton. He later died, I believe about three days after.

You can get all the video and the sequence of events from the initial arrest here: