Veteran with dementia dies following tragic encounter with Birmingham police

Carl Grant, a 68-year-old U.S. Marine Corps vet­er­an suf­fer­ing from demen­tia, trag­i­cal­ly lost his life after an encounter with Birm­ing­ham police offi­cers in Feb­ru­ary 2020. The inci­dent, which left Grant with a wrecked spinal cord, has raised ques­tions about law enforce­men­t’s han­dling of sit­u­a­tions involv­ing indi­vid­u­als with cog­ni­tive impairments.

On Super Bowl Sun­day, Grant left his Geor­gia home to go gro­cery shop­ping but became dis­ori­ent­ed and end­ed up in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, more than two hours away. Mis­tak­ing a stranger’s house for his own, he attempt­ed to unlock the door, prompt­ing the home­own­er to call 911.

Respond­ing offi­cers hand­cuffed Grant but soon real­ized he gen­uine­ly believed he lived there, with one offi­cer rec­og­niz­ing signs of demen­tia. Despite this, police failed to call medics for an eval­u­a­tion or noti­fy a super­vi­sor, instead instruct­ing Grant to leave the premises.

Lat­er that night, Grant returned to the same house, and offi­cers respond­ed once again. This time, they took him to the emer­gency room at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma at Birm­ing­ham Hos­pi­tal. While there, a police offi­cer slammed Grant onto the floor, caus­ing severe dam­age to his spinal cord and leav­ing him paralyzed.

Grant’s fam­i­ly made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion not to cor­rect his belief that he had been par­a­lyzed dur­ing the Viet­nam War, fear­ing fur­ther con­fu­sion and dis­tress. Trag­i­cal­ly, Grant passed away in the after­math of the inci­dent, leav­ing his loved ones to ques­tion the actions of the offi­cers involved and advo­cate for bet­ter train­ing and pro­to­cols in sit­u­a­tions involv­ing indi­vid­u­als with cog­ni­tive impairments.