Freddie Gray Had Pre-Existing Conditions, Just Not Ones You’ve Heard

Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died last week from a severe spinal cord injury he suffered before or during an arrest.

Reports have been circulating on the Internet suggesting Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died last week from a spinal cord injury suffered either before or while in police custody, had a pre-existing injury. The initial report from the New Republic — which PPD found serious discrepancies with — cites Howard County court records as proof that a pre-existing injury “may have possibly” led to his death in April 19.

The Baltimore Sun first pushed back on the report citing court records examined Wednesday, showing the case had nothing to do with a car accident or a spine injury.

“Instead, they are connected to a lawsuit alleging that Gray and his sister were injured by exposure lead paint,” The BS report said (yes, pun intended).

However, according to a PPD investigation into the claims made in both reports, there are a number of relevant questions still unanswered. Further, both reports from The Baltimore Sun and the New Republic missed a larger, imperative element to this very unfortunate story. 

The Baltimore Sun did not address why in his documents, Freddie Gray checked “work injury, medical malpractice and auto accident,” while his sister Fredericka Gray checked “other” when asked to describe the type of accident. Gray’s writing is completely unreadable in the explanation box, but let’s assume that was a complete mistake and there was no pre-existing trauma involved.

That doesn’t at all put to bed the issue of the existence of a pre-existing injury, and here’s why.

While it is true that the case referred to in the initial New Republic report was dismissed on April 2, it was Gray family attorney William H. “Billy” Murphy who confirmed that the Howard County case was connected to the lead paint lawsuit.

Putting aside the illegible document, The Baltimore Sun relied upon the confirmation by and information from attorney Billy Murphy, who as far as PPD can tell, has already told one lie on the issue of pre-existing injuries.

Mr. Murphy was asked point blank by Sean Hannity Tuesday night whether Gray had “any pre-existing conditions or injuries” prior to his fatal encounter with the police.

“None that we (the Gray family and lawyers) know of,” Mr. Murphy told Hannity when asked if he could put the rumors to rest regarding pre-existing conditions. “Absolutely, we have no such information.”

Whether Mr. Gray was in a car accident or not — and, for the record, we do not believe there is currently enough evidence to support such a claim — he still in fact had by his own admission, several “pre-existing conditions.”

According to a lawsuit filed in 2008 against the owner of a Sandtown-Winchester home they rented for four years, Freddie Gray and his two sisters had poisonous lead levels in their blood. The lawsuit cited educational, behavioral and various medical problems as a result of severe exposure to lead. The property owner unsurprisingly argued that other factors likely contributed to the various deficiencies, including poverty and their mother’s heroin abuse.

Regardless, when examining the case and weighing the evidence against the known effects of lead on the body, then it becomes pretty clear why Mr. Murphy would not want a media or legal spotlight to be shined on the case.

While the case was settled before going to trial in 2010 and the terms of the settlement are not public, medical experts say both lead levels and the circumstances surrounding Mr. Gray’s medical conditions from the time of his premature birth, cannot be ignored when examining the case.

“Regardless of where lead comes from, once inside the body, it can be delivered to the skeleton and incorporated in new cells produced in bone tissue,” according to researcher Marjorie Peraza. “Lead in blood and other soft tissues has a half-life of 35 days; but lead in bone has a half-life of 5 to 20 years.”

Lead competes with calcium in the body and, in what becomes a vicious biological cycle, calcium deficiencies further promote lead absorption. For decades scientists have known that the skeleton stores roughly 95 percent of lead in the human body.

So, the question remains if Freddie Gray was exposed to high enough lead levels to be of concern and relevance to the case. Remember the police pursuit of Freddie Gray went on over a period of 45 minutes, an exhausting and strenuous activity for someone who exhibited symptoms of severe health problems. A prominent Baltimore doctor told Geraldo Rivera that an asthmatic seizure may have played a role in the young man’s death, one of several new claims that will become significantly more credible if Gray was indeed suffering from lead exposure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has set the standard elevated blood lead level for adults to be 10 µg/dl of the whole blood. For children the number is obviously much lower at 5 µg/dl of blood as of 2012, down from a previous 10 µg/dl, because children are especially prone to the health effects of lead. However, the CDC and the World Health Organization state lower lead levels have harmful health effects and there is no known safe exposure level.

Freddie Gray, according to court documents, was tested as having between 11 mg/dL and 19 mg/dL in six tests conducted between 1992 and 1996. Test results from all three siblings found all of them had lead levels above the 10 micrograms per deciliter (mg/dL), which is the level that state law set as the threshold for lead poisoning. Among lead’s well-known developmental health effects is stunting and weakening of skeletal growth in children. Lead is also known to delay fracture healing in young adults and contribute to osteoporosis later in life.

If Gray’s mother had also been exposed during pregnancy, as the family claimed, then the effects from both drug use and lead exposure during fetal development could have have had a terribly negative impact on Mr. Gray’s health as a child. The effects from that exposure would’ve continued to plague him at 25, whether he knew it or not.

“Because the early embryo makes a cartilage model of the skull, spine, and limbs, chondrogenesis is vital to full skeletal development,” Valerie J. Brown found during her research in the National Institute of Environmental Health Science. “Lead triggers the formation of too much cartilage at the wrong time, or prevents its further maturation into bone,” the research found, helping to “explain lead’s crippling effects on the skeleton.”

A joint investigation between state and federal officials is underway to determine whether police brutality occurred during the arrest of Freddie Gray. Unfortunately, officials said Thursday the report will not be made public, making it impossible to know whether they failed to consider all elements of the case.