Mother's call for help ends with son's death minutes after Little Rock officers handcuffed him

Julia Collins holds a portrait of her family at her home in Little Rock on Saturday. All four of her sons have struggled with drug abuse, including two who have died.
Julia Collins holds a portrait of her family at her home in Little Rock on Saturday. All four of her sons have struggled with drug abuse, including two who have died.

When an ambulance drove away from her house on Aug. 30, Julia Collins thought her son was finally going to get the help he needed. Two hours later, she learned he was dead.

Collins, 74, has four sons. One died as a result of his drug habit in 2015. One is in the Pulaski County jail. One's depression leaves him near comatose in her upstairs bedroom most days.

And then there's Stephen.

Stephen Collins was troubled, too, Julia Collins said nearly two weeks after her son's death. Stephen died minutes after Little Rock police officers held him down on the ground and handcuffed him.

His death remains under investigation, and Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Michael Ford said Friday that there is no new information. The three police officers who responded to the disturbance call on Aug. 30 are on administrative leave.

Though the autopsy has been completed, his body remains at the state Crime Laboratory awaiting funeral arrangements.

Stephen Collins was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia in his multiple stints in mental institutions, his mother said.

Since his teenage years, her son had also battled an on-and-off drug addiction that family members said began as self-medication.

It was a scenario Julia Collins had seen before. For more than 45 years, she has dealt with the effects of drugs -- though she said she hasn't taken a pill since she took a baby aspirin in 1953.

She doesn't trust them, but her sons and her late ex-husband have been in and out of prisons and the grasp of drug abuse for decades.

And she's been there, she said, through every hallucination and raging fit, through every mental evaluation and prison visit -- and through every 911 call she's had to place out of fear for the safety of her children or herself.

According to Little Rock police dispatch records, Collins has called 911 more than 100 times in the past two years. Neighbors and friends have called a few dozen more.

The vast majority of 911 calls concerned Lance Collins, Stephen's older brother, but every son has been reported at some time or another.

THAT DAY

Sometimes, Stephen's hallucinations -- a common symptom of paranoid schizophrenia -- caused him to believe someone was chasing him or that someone was in their home. In police reports, Collins reports her son walking around the house with a shard of glass or a knife, convinced that someone was after him.

The first time one of her children was caught breaking the law, Collins said she was heartbroken. By Aug. 30, however, it had become a routine she knew all too well.

Collins said Stephen came home that day upset. She suspected he'd been using some kind of drug, but there was no way to be sure. He was yelling and talking about hallucinations again, she said, and he went into the backyard and sprayed himself down with a water hose because he said he was burning.

He tracked back inside their green, two-story house sopping wet, screaming as he did so.

Collins said she became afraid for his safety and dialed the familiar number.

"Listen, I need the police ... It's my son, Stephen," Collins said, according to a recording of the 911 call. "He's having some kind of fit ..."

A neighbor, too, called 911, and described what he heard coming from the Collins house.

"It sounds like there is a woman's voice screaming at the top of her lungs, 'No, get away from me. Leave. Get away,'" the caller said. "She sounds like she's under distress. I wanted to see if maybe an officer wanted to come check it out or something."

An emergency operator sent several officers at 4:05 p.m. to 1204 N. Tyler Street. At first Stephen was holed up in his room, refusing to exit.

Officers eventually coaxed him into opening the door and walking downstairs, but after a few moments, Collins said her son bolted toward the backyard.

She'd seen it all before, she said. She didn't follow.

Looking back now, Collins said she wishes she'd followed the police to the backyard. Maybe then, she said, she'd have a little peace.

'I'M HIS MOTHER'

A dispatcher requested an ambulance at 4:14, according to MEMS records. The ambulance arrived in four minutes.

As Julia stood on the front lawn talking to an officer, Stephen Collins was placed in an ambulance and taken away from the alleyway behind her home. She never saw the officers and emergency personnel put him in the ambulance.

It was normal, Collins said, and went back inside her home.

She called her daughter, Tara Isom Collins, who had planned on visiting, but couldn't get to her mother's house. Collins said she looked out her window later and saw officers wrapping bright yellow crime tape around the street signs near her home.

She asked a detective what was going on.

"He told me he couldn't tell me anything yet," she said. "I said, 'I'm his mother, what do you mean you can't tell me anything yet?'"

Isom Collins said they asked police officers over and over as the officer took photos and searched the house, but, for nearly two hours, they got no answers.

She did not know she was talking to homicide detectives.

A news release from the Little Rock Police Department says after Stephen Collins ran from officers, they caught him and put him on the ground. They placed handcuffs on his wrists, the release said.

He was "alert and breathing" when the ambulance arrived, officers reported, but his condition deteriorated when he was in the ambulance.

The officers did chest compressions while medics tried to stabilize him, according to the release, but Stephen Collins was pronounced dead in the emergency room.

More than two hours after she'd called officers to her door that afternoon, they returned. This time, however, it was to say her son was dead.

"What was it? Was it a drug thing? Was it something worse?" Collins said recently at her home. "I didn't want Stephen to die. I wanted him to get help. I wanted him to get out on his own and have a family. I didn't want him to die."

Officers took the family in separate cars to the police station, where they were interviewed for hours.

Isom Collins said at one point she realized she was talking to a homicide detective.

"I finally started to realize what was going on," she said.

It was her birthday.

'JUST WANT TO KNOW'

Tamara Collins, the youngest of the six children, said she just wants to know what happened. If Stephen overdosed, she said the family would be relieved, in a way.

"We just want to know," she said. "Whatever happened, we just want to know. I want to know my brother wasn't murdered."

Collins said her son should have been in a mental rehabilitation center. He often experienced long bouts of depression with quick shifts to elation -- something Collins attributed to his bipolar disorder.

He needed treatment, she said, not jail.

She checked him into mental health and rehab facilities -- voluntarily and involuntarily -- dozens of times. He'd get out in three days or 30, she said, but nothing ever changed.

In a police report from July of 2017, officers said Stephen Collins jumped the fence at a court-mandated rehab facility and ran home. Collins said he'd done it several times before.

"He couldn't function well with people," she said. "He'd get a job and a few days later he'd just stop showing up. There just wasn't a place for someone like him here. We still don't know how to treat people like him. He fell through the cracks every time."

Stephen loved small things like planting trees and rearranging garden decorations, Collins said. In the front lawn, Stephen planted trees too close to the house. Now, Collins said she doesn't want to cut them down.

"I did everything I could for Stephen," she said. "I never threw him out. He always had a room with me."

As a child, everyone called him Puggy for his little pug nose, Collins said. He was sweet, she said, and chunky like his father, Shelby Collins Sr., who died in 2012, more than a decade after he and Collins divorced.

They spent many happy days, she said, picnicking in a park in Maumelle.

"When's the last time I was happy?" she asked recently. "I don't know. We wore out those picnic tables, I guess."

Also like his father, Stephen Collins' trouble with drugs came early. Collins-Isom said she believes Stephen began taking drugs to self-medicate, but that it quickly became addiction.

"Everything is put on the family and I did what I could, but when he got older I couldn't control him," she said. "Nobody could."

Sometimes, Collins can't help but think the worst. When her son exited his room for police officers on Aug. 30, he was holding a pill bottle, Collins said. It was the painkiller Gabapentin, and the bottle was almost empty.

"If he'd lived," she said, "I think he would have lived to die another day."

Lance Collins, who is in the Pulaski County jail after breaking a protection order his mother took out against him earlier this year, doesn't know about Stephen's death yet. Collins said she's afraid to tell him -- afraid of what he'll do.

For a long time, Collins said she wouldn't take out a restraining order on her son. But one day, after too many drug-fueled rages and threats, she caved.

"I know when he gets out, he'll be right back here," she said. "I don't know what to do. Sometimes people say I should just leave. But this is my home. Why should I leave my home?"

Joe Collins, her middle son, lost his job after Stephen's death. Collins said her son has fallen into a deep depression, rarely leaving his upstairs room in her home.

Tara Isom Collins (left) talks about her brother as her mother, Julia Collins, looks on at their home in Little Rock on Saturday.
Tara Isom Collins (left) talks about her brother as her mother, Julia Collins, looks on at their home in Little Rock on Saturday.

AMONG THE TREES

The house at 1204 N. Tyler St. has been her home since 1976, Collins said, ever since she moved from her mother's house next door. The house has a sprawling backyard with mimosa trees, a stone walkway plagued by mosquitoes and tall, shady oaks.

Walking around the yard, Collins said Stephen loved it there. He would grill and take care of the many trees and plants. Beneath a stone rabbit, Stephen buried his pet bunny after it died.

"He was almost childlike, in a way," Tara Collins said. "He was nervous."

But if there was one place he belonged, the family agreed it was among the trees.

Pink crepe myrtles dot the alleyway where officers held her son to the ground. They were flowering on the day Stephen died, but by mid-September, most of their blooms had passed.

On her walls, Collins has dozens and dozens of photos. Between paintings -- some bought, some she painted herself -- her grandchildren's faces smile down on her alongside her grandparents and great-grandparents. All of them happy, all of them old.

She keeps few recent photos.

From the house, Collins watched each of her children grow up. And she planned two of their funerals.

Now Collins' worries have turned to burying Stephen. She's trying to find the money to have him cremated and talks about where she might leave his ashes.

Somewhere beautiful, she hopes, with trees.

A Section on 09/17/2018

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