The man police said was shot by a Centra security guard during an altercation early Monday, “will likely remain paralyzed for the rest of his life as a result of the shooting, if he survives,” according to a statement Wednesday from his family’s attorney. Jonathan Warner, 28, of Amherst County, remains in critical condition at Lynchburg General Hospital. His father, Harold “Brad” Warner, said from California on Wednesday a bullet is lodged in his son’s spine.
Paul Valois, a Lynchburg attorney asked by Warner’s mother, Ruth Ann Warner-Bushey, to represent the family, issued a news release Wednesday questioning the official account of the shooting. He said he seeks speak with anyone who may have witnessed the incident. Warner began exhibiting “symptoms of anxiety” while eating dinner Sunday at a restaurant with his family, according to Valois, of James River Legal Associates.
Recognizing the symptoms were related to an imbalance in his bipolar disorder medications, Warner went to the Lynchburg General Hospital Emergency Department, which is separate from Centra’s psychiatric emergency department, for care at about 9 p.m. Sunday.
While there, Warner-Bushey — who was with her son in the emergency department until about midnight, Valois said in the news release — informed Centra staff of Warner’s medication problem and history of anxiety.
After waiting in the emergency department for more than seven hours “and after a discussion ensued about a potential involuntary detention, Mr. Warner became upset and anxious and an incident occurred that resulted in Mr. Warner being shot at least four times by a Centra security officer,” Valois said in the release.
According to the Lynchburg Police Department, Warner was shot during a physical altercation with a Centra security officer at about 4:43 a.m. Monday. Warner disarmed the security officer, Wes Gillespie, of his Taser and discharge it during the struggle, police said in a news release. Warner also physically assaulted Gillespie and another employee, police said. At the time of the shooting, Warner was armed with the Taser.
“Investigative findings indicate Warner attacked security officer Wes Gillespie while in the Dillard Building,” according to a Lynchburg Police Department news release.
Centra Health declined to comment on the shooting or the psychiatric emergency department, which opened to the public only three months ago. Horizon Behavioral Health, the community service board that jointly established the psychiatric emergency department with Centra and state funding, did not respond to email requests for comment.
The Dillard Building, roughly 20 steps away from Lynchburg General Hospital’s main emergency department, houses Centra’s psychiatric emergency department. That department was established specifically to care for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis.
The center “creates a therapeutic, safe and private environment for interventions and care for those with mental health issues,” Gina Meadows, director of adult mental health services for Centra Health, said this fall when the facility held a soft opening.
“The family is distraught and desperate for answers,” Valois said in a news release he posted on his company website about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Valois said in the release the Warner family wants to know why Centra staff chose to “ignore” Warner-Bushey’s warnings about her son’s condition, why it took so long to evaluate Warner, why he was allowed access to weapons given Centra was considering an involuntary detention order, why lethal force was used against a patient with a Taser and why Warner was shot multiple times.
“These questions involve grossly and wantonly negligent treatment of a patient who needed prompt care and attention but who instead languished for hours without proper care or treatment. They also involve the application of excessive lethal force in response to what was at most a simple assault,” Valois said Wednesday in the news release.
Valois also said he attempted to visit his client in the intensive care unit at the hospital just after 9 p.m. Tuesday, but was denied access because he was not an immediate family member. According to Valois, uniformed officers of the Lynchburg Police Department and others who were not immediate family members were granted access to the unit and to Warner.
On Wednesday morning, Warner-Bushey went to Facebook to voice her concerns.
“Why are they taking him to be the wrong one he was sick he was in need and they harm them the did not help him and they did not protect him from himself,” she wrote a posts, which she later deleted.
Martha Brown, co-founder of The Lighthouse and a friend of Warner’s, said her group has been deeply upset by the turn of events. From time to time, Warner participated in one or two of the many events hosted at The Lighthouse, a multi-faceted nonprofit community outreach center on Church Street in downtown Lynchburg.
“When he is doing well, he is such a sweet, gentle soul,” Brown said.
Warner’s father, who lives in California, was beside himself Wednesday as he talked about his son, who has struggled for years to escape the allure of drugs and alcohol to become a devoutly Christian, “docile, lovable, sweet individual.”
Brad and Jonathan Warner spent part of the December 2015 holiday together in Florida.
Brad Warner said he and his son prayed together and his son “was happy to report to me that he’s still clean and dry. He was seeking new employment,” Warner said.
Jonathan was good with his hands, working construction, plumbing jobs and doing some electrical work, his father said. Jonathan also was a musician, poet and artist.
Jonathan began using drugs and alcohol at age 18, after his parents divorced, Brad Warner said.
In 2009 he moved to California to live with his dad. He fell in with the wrong crowd; his father said his son began using “a variety of drugs” including crystal meth, acid and “just terrible things that debilitate the body and eat the brain.”
In 2009, he hit “rock bottom” and enrolled in residential treatment in Sacramento, California. In 2011, he was clean and dry and he returned to Virginia.
Upon his return he was committed to the Western State Psychiatric Hospital in Staunton, his father said.
“Although I know the drugs have destroyed part of his brain, he’s a good kid,” Brad Warner said. “I don’t believe this situation Monday morning was drug or alcohol related but then again I’m unable to access any of Jonathan’s records to date.”
He openly wonders why his son’s medical records from his roughly year-long stay at the Western State Psychiatric Hospital in Staunton were not taken into immediate consideration upon his arrival at the emergency department.
The hospital did not do “due-diligence” in going through his medical records, Brad Warner said, estimating his son’s height and weight at 5-foot 9-inches and 190 pounds.
Brad Warner said he believes had officials taken the time to read his mental health history, they could have sedated him or restrained him, eliminating a possible altercation.
“It is more than befuddling to me how someone so sweet and beautiful and gentle and docile can be considered a threat and then be shot at,” said Brad Warner, a gun advocate.
