Teen-Ager’s Death at Juvenile Hall a Homicide, Coroner Rules

The death of a teen-ager after a struggle with staffers in county Juvenile Hall was ruled a homicide in an autopsy report released Thursday by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Anthony Dion Bowie, 16, did not die from a chokehold but from a spinal cord injury, according to the autopsy.

Coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier said Bowie’s injuries were not of the sort that would have been evident had a chokehold caused the death.

Bowie died Dec. 15 at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey after a melee that started with a shouting match between him and members of a rival gang, authorities said.

As the confrontation escalated, authorities said, Bowie was dragged into his cell by staffers trying to break it up. Accounts of what happened next vary, but shortly afterward, the youth was found dead in his cell.

Bowie’s family has alleged that his death resulted from a chokehold used by a staffer trying to restrain him.

Carrier said the autopsy showed the cause of death to be “blunt neck injury and asphyxia.”

Instead of the blocked air passages and throat bruises that would have been present had death resulted from a chokehold, Carrier said, coroner’s investigators found hemorrhages around the covering of the spinal cord at the youth’s neck.

“When the spinal cord is suppressed, if it is pinched or injured or cut off, it will cause respiratory distress,” Carrier said. Such an injury, he added, is “consistent with bending of the neck” but is not a choking injury.