The mentally ill teen boy, locked in an isolation cell for 24 hours at one of Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers on April 26, believed his toilet was possessed by a ghost.
The toilet kept flushing on its own for nearly a half-hour while the agitated boy kicked and yelled at it, according to documents obtained by the Herald-Leader under the Kentucky Open Records Act. The boy had “multiple psychiatric disorders,” developmental delays and anger control issues, a nurse said later.
Aggravating the situation, Correctional Officer James Crowe walked down the hall to tell the boy through the window of the cell door: “Hey, quit flushing your toilet like that.” If the boy didn’t knock it off, Crowe warned, he would have to restart his 24 hours in isolation.
The boy pointed to the toilet and insisted it was acting “by itself, on its own.”
“Naw, they said you’re doing it,” Crowe responded, according to a transcript of security video.
Speaking into his hand-held radio, the officer said loudly enough for the boy to hear, “Restart his iso.”