EUGENE — On the sixth floor of an intensive care unit the man in the hospital bed stares up at a stark, white ceiling. Noises drift about him: the soft, monotonous beeps and sighs of a ventilator.  The low murmur of voices from a nurse’s station just a few feet away. Crowded with machines, the room is dark, save for the sunlight streaming in from a large window.

Even if he wanted to, the man couldn’t turn his head, no matter how slightly. Not in response to a voice, or to gaze out the window.  

Carl T. Foster used to be the master of his own body.

Now, he’s its prisoner.

Foster can’t talk, eat, breathe or wiggle his toes. He can’t feel the warmth of a touch or the sting of a needle.   

Just two weeks ago, Foster was a handyman, working at a home on North Dean Street in Coquille. Neighbors said he was sweeping a back porch, when Coquille Police officers James Bryant and Chris Webley approached him in connection with a criminal mischief complaint. Coquille Police Chief Michael Reaves said an 80-year-old woman had accused Foster of following her and Foster’s ex-girlfriend as they left in a car from the man’s house on Shelley Road, blocking them with his truck and smashing the car’s windshield with a hammer.

A press release from the Coos County District Attorney’s Office indicated that Foster resisted arrest on Jan. 12. The officers pulled him to the ground, each grabbing one of his arms, the press release said. Then, the officers noticed Foster wasn’t breathing and had gone limp. While they waited for medics, another officer arrived and attempted CPR. Foster was taken to Coquille Valley Hospital.

At first, police and District Attorney R. Paul Frasier believed Foster’s injuries were not severe. However, at about noon, an Coquille police supervisor informed Frasier his injuries were life-threatening.

The injured man was life-flighted to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene for an operation to stabilize a cracked vertebra.

It was then that Frasier called for a full, independent investigation by the Coos County Major Crime Team, which included officers from the Coos Bay, Myrtle Point and North Bend police forces and a trooper from the Oregon State Police.  

At the time, Reaves called the incident a “horrible accident.”

A daughter’s love

Foster’s daughter, Kaycee Faught, 33, got a call from her uncle, Terry Foster of Cave Junction. Her dad had been hurt.

“I just heard that there was an accident, the police were involved (and my) dad was being airlifted and was on life support,” said Faught, touching her hand to forehead.

She was about an hour from her home in Yakima, Wash., driving on an interstate when she got the call. Faught, a real estate agent, immediately drove home, grabbed some clothes and headed for Eugene, arriving at midnight Jan. 13.  

She was understandably upset.

Despite the distance between Coquille and Yakima, Faught said she and her father are extremely close, having gone on several road trips with her son Austin Butler, 13. She said her dad has lived in the area for several years since moving from Cave Junction. He’s originally from the Los Angeles area, has four children, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild.

“I was really scared,” she said of the incident. “I was shocked that something like this could happen to anybody. It’s just appalling to me.”

Her fear grew as she realized the extent of her father’s injuries.

“(He’s a) quadriplegic. He can’t speak on his own, he can’t breathe on his own ... he can’t move any other portion of his body than his head,” said Dwight G. Purdy, Faught’s attorney and a partner within the Thorp, Purdy, Jewett, Urness & Wilkinson, P.C. firm in Springfield. He said Foster’s prognosis is grim.

“He will basically be a prisoner in his own body,” he said.

Faught hired Purdy, along with Brian Millington, to handle legal questions and to investigate the incident, she said.

But information is scarce.

So far, she hasn’t been contacted by any law enforcement agency, nor have her attorneys. Purdy said medical examiners from Coos and Lane counties came to the hospital to assess Foster’s injuries and look for physical evidence.

“We’re at the stage of trying to figure out what went on,” Purdy said, contending he has tried unsuccessfully to get information from the Coquille Police Department and the DA. The attorney said he believes there might be audio tapes of the arrest. He’s looking to the public for information.

“We just want the public to have an opportunity to provide information outside of the official channels,” Purdy said.

Frasier was quick to point out that the officers in the department only tape traffic stops. No audio tapes of the incident exist, he said.

For his part, the DA said he would like to interview Foster about the incident.

But given Foster’s condition, Purdy said, that’s not likely to ever happen.

“Clearly, there is a concern when any citizen has contact with the police and comes away a quadriplegic,” Purdy said.

The officers

Back in Coquille, officers James Bryant and Chris Webley remain on the job.

Bryant is a six-year veteran of the Coquille Police Department. He was named in a civil rights lawsuit stemming from a traffic stop filed in 2006 by Daryl Houston of Coquille, against the city and police department. The defense team filed a motion for summary judgment citing no factual information for a jury to decide, said Manuel Hernandez, the attorney representing Houston. The court agreed, Hernandez said, deciding in favor of the city. Hernandez filed an appeal to the Oregon Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 2.

Webley, a former Coquille school teacher of special education at Lincoln Elementary School for six years, has served on the police department for about a year, said Coquille Superintendent Diann Gillaspie. She said he resigned from his position in October 2006 to become a police officer.

“He absolutely did a wonderful job in the classroom. I was sorry to see him leave. The Coquille city got a great guy,” she said, noting Webley’s strong ethics.

Dian Courtright, a Coquille resident who oversees the Concerned Citizens of Coquille blog, said residents have made complaints about Bryant in the past. She demurred from elaborating on their grievances to protect the anonymity of those who made them.

“I think the Coquille Police represent the very worst of law enforcement,” Courtright said. She is very concerned about what occurred, as well as by the community’s reaction. Foster is not a member of the group, nor has he made complaints about law enforcement that she is aware of, Courtright said.

Founded in June, The Concerned Citizens is an organization that aims to mediate disputes between Coquille residents and the police, while giving community members a place to air their concerns.

“I think that the law is heavy handed and I really feel there is a problem with people viewing other people as somehow worthy of being ostracized,” she said. “I don’t know if it was police brutality or a mistake.”

She said what happened to Carl Foster is just one example.

Foster is not unknown to the Coquille Police Department. Officers cited him four times in 2004 - 2005, with driving while suspended. He was arrested and convicted in June 2004 on a contempt of court/violation of a restraining order. Previously, he had been arrested and convicted on charges of harassment and second-degree criminal mischief. He was arrested by Coquille Police in early 2006, and acquitted on charges of second-degree assault, first-degree attempted assault, third-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, menacing and recklessly endangering another.

Reports have surfaced that Foster has a history of methamphetamine use.

“I actually asked Dad if he has used and he said, ‘Not for a long time,’” Faught said.

“Even if (he) had,” Purdy said, “no one deserves that judgment.”

Uncertain future

Back in Foster’s room at Sacred Heart, Faught visits her father amid machines monitoring his breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. A single stream of sunlight pours into the room from a large window. Wearing a metal halo to stabilize his neck and his arms resting on pillows at his sides, Foster mouths words to Faught, asking her to scratch his forehead and rub the corners of his eyes.

Since the incident, the father and daughter’s lives have changed drastically.

The single mother keeps a nearly constant vigil over her father when not resting at a nearby guesthouse.

She doesn’t know what she will do once he is ready to leave the hospital. The medical bills are piling up and he will probably require around-the-clock care. Neither has health insurance.

But today, none of those things seem to matter, while Carl Foster remains tethered to life-support machines in a hospital room in Eugene.