SWAT team needed for vet with a shoe horn

ROS and Eagle Keeper send us a link from the Chicago Tribune about the Park Forest, IL police department which felt that it needed riot shields, a taser and bean bag rounds to subdue a 95-year-old Army Air Corps veteran by the name of John Wrana who refused medical treatment in his nursing home room and held off staff with his cane and a shoe horn.

The old man, described by a family member as “wobbly” on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.

First they tased him, but that didn’t work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.

The police claim that Wrana had armed himself with a 12-inch knife, but staff and family say that there was no such weapon in the man’s nursing home room. the police also claim that nursing home staff was threatened by Wrana’s demeanor, but nursing home staff report that they were well-clear of the room after the police arrived. In fact, according to the article, staff begged the police to let them back in the room to calm the older gentleman down;

[Wrana’s family attorney, Nicholas] Grapsas says he was told that police used a riot shield to come through the door before shooting bean-bag rounds at the old man as he sat in his chair.

Riot shields are used to push back mobs of angry young protesters in the streets, or against dangerous convicts in prison cells, not to subdue an old, old man in a chair.

“At some point, I’m told there were between five and seven police officers, they went back to the room with a riot shield in hand, entered the door and shot him with a shotgun that contained bean-bag rounds,” Grapsas said.

His stepdaughter said that Wrana left the service as a sergeant and a veteran of the Army Air Corp and served in the India-Burma campaign of World War II. I guess the Park Forest police had read the warnings from the Department of Homeland Security in regards to dangerous veterans being the greatest terrorist threat.

Category: Veterans Issues