Mother Says Jails Fail to Accommodate Disabled Son

CORRECTION: The original version of this article was changed to clarify details of the incident inside the jail, including the position Juwan Carter was sitting and the layout of the room. We apologise for the inaccuracy.

One woman's brain damaged 17-year-old was mistreated in a jail, and she says if better accommodations were made for mentally disabled inmates, it would not have happened.

The boy, Juwan Carter, was arrested on April 14 on suspicion of kidnapping, robbery, false imprisonment and attempted murder and was booked into the Southwest Juvenile Hall, where he remains today.

The boy suffers from brain damage from being shot in the eye on Aug. 4 in his French Valley home.

The teen lost one of his eyes, and the bullet is lodged in his frontal lobe, leaving his brain damaged.

"He can't control his emotions, his reasoning is impaired," said his mother, Michelle Petty-Sparks.

Two of Juwan's former friends shot the boy in the doorway of their apartment, she said. "He said he went to lay down to take a nap, and they knocked on the door. He opened the door, and they pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger."

Juwan was rushed to the hospital, where doctors removed his eye and replaced it with an implant. They deemed removing the bullet too risky, so they left it in, Petty-Sparks said.

The brain damage was minor, but it affected his behavior. Now, he acts irrationally, unable to think things through, she said.

Nonetheless, things were looking up for Juwan. He finished high school at home -- a year ahead of schedule -- while undergoing out-patient therapy. Then, something unthinkable happened -- Jewan was arrested.

The sheriff's department got a report of somebody in a car shooting at somebody in another car in a quiet middle-class Temecula housing tract.

The next morning, deputies broke through the family's apartment door, leaving a hole in it and a damaged frame. They tackled her son and led him away in handcuffs, she recalled.

Because the splintered frame prevented the door from being closed, "we ended up getting our place looted," Petty-Sparks said.

The trauma of seeing her son in this situation got worse when she saw the way the guards treat him in Juvenile Hall, she said.

She and Juwan's father were visiting him recently, sitting sitting together and talking, she said, when the position of the teen's hand aroused a guard's suspicion.

It was on his leg resting in a cup shape, as though he was hiding something. The guard ordered him to open his hand, but he just replied, "I'm tired of you messing with me," his mother recalled.

Petty-Sparks told him to open his hand, but it was too late. The guard slapped his hand aside, which kicked off a scuffle. Numerous guards rushed in, they pepper sprayed the boy and pushed him against the wall, leaving him bruised around his usable eye.

Seeing her son -- with a blind eye and a brain disability -- tackled and manhandled for such a minor offense horrified her. "If he loses his other eye, he'll be blind for life."

The guards' reaction -- and much of his treatment in jail -- would be understandable for most people, but not for a boy whose disability causes him to act unpredictably.

"When you're blocked off by glass, and you're watching your child get attacked head-first when he has a bullet in his brain, that's the hardest part," she said.

If the jail staff were made aware of his condition, and informed on how to handle somebody with his disability, they wouldn't have to be so forceful with him, she said.

"I just want him to get the help he needs," she said.