Paragraphs six and seven read:  ” ‘I think Nick’s
medication caused a manic reaction,’  his wife
says.”

“The victim took medication for his heart,
lungs and depression. While vacationing in Lee County, he
was arrested March 27 for disorderly intoxication and
again two days later for trespassing.”

Second paragraph reads:

“Widowed last spring after 40 years of marriage, life is empty without
husband Nick Christie.

http://www.news-press.com/article/20091018/COLUMNISTS02/91017042/1180/fgcu

Ohio widow wonders when justice will call her

Husband killed while in custody

By Sam
Cook • scook@news-press.com • October 18, 2009

No news
isn’t good news for Joyce Christie.

Widowed last spring after 40 years of
marriage, life is empty without husband Nick Christie.

“You should be in
my shoes,” she says by telephone from Girard, Ohio. “Those jail guards not only
killed my husband, they took my life. This should never have
happened.”

The circumstances surrounding Nick Christie’s death were
horrendous.

Her wait for justice is almost as agonizing.

“I think
Nick’s medication caused a manic reaction,” his wife says.

The victim
took medication for his heart, lungs and depression. While vacationing in Lee
County, he was arrested March 27 for disorderly intoxication and again two days
later for trespassing.

While held in the Lee County Jail mental health
section March 29, he was restrained in a chair and repeatedly pepper-sprayed by

corrections officers, according to prisoner, Ken Cutler, incarcerated five cells
from the victim. Jail officials took Christie, 62, to Gulf Coast Medical
Hospital. He died March 31.

“I would like to confront the guards who did
this to Nick,” says his widow. “Why are they still working? Why weren’t they
charged with his death?”

She hired Ohio and Florida attorneys to work the
case, but has heard nothing in 61 2 months about the investigations.

“I’m
sitting here crying,” she says. “I have so many unanswered questions. What’s
wrong with Florida? Where is the justice for Nick?”

Sgt. Larry King, Lee
sheriff’s spokesman, says his office completed its death investigation and
turned it over to the state attorney’s office.

“(Nick Christie) died at
the hospital,” King says. “He wasn’t, technically, in our
custody.”
Spokeswoman Samantha Syoen says the state is reviewing the case.
She couldn’t estimate when it would be finished.

The U.S. Department of
Justice and FBI also are investigating if there was a civil rights’
violation.

“We’re reviewing it to see if a federal crime was committed,’’
says Special Agent David Couvertier, FBI spokesman in Tampa. “Once we identify
that, we’ll decide.”
(2 of 2)

The death certificate lists stress from
restraint and pepper spray as two contributing factors, along with cardiac
arrest and low blood pressure caused by heart pump failure.

Dr. Robert
Pfalzgraf, deputy chief medical examiner who signed the certificate, says in 99
percent of the cases the person sprayed doesn’t die from the
irritant.

“(Pepper spray) didn’t kill him in the sense that it was toxic
or poison,’’ he says. “But (it did) in the sense it was an irritant. It was a
stressor to his heart.”

Pfalzgraf says Christie’s heart couldn’t stand
it.

“I can’t ignore the fact that he died while they were doing stressful
things to him,” he says.

Joyce Christie’s heart can’t stand it
either.

“I’m having an awful, terrible time,” she says.

She sits
in her Girard house, 1,244 miles from Fort Myers and wonders when justice will
arrive.

“What is there to review?” she asks. “It’s black and white. Nick
goes to jail. They restrain and pepper-spray him. Two days later, he’s
dead.”

It sounds simple, yet she knows better.

“I hate it when
people tell me the system failed Nick,” she says. “The system didn’t fail Nick.
The system killed him.”

The widow is bitter.

Can you blame
her?

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