Ailing sex offender chokes to death at clinic

DOVER, DELAWARE — A 22-year-old Huntington's disease victim who was denied a bed in a state health care facility because he was a registered sex offender choked to death Monday at a Dover mental health clinic.

Family members said they were told that Joseph Heverin, 22, whose muscle control had deteriorated to the point where he often fell and had to be put in a wheelchair, choked to death on a sandwich at Dover Behavioral Health Systems.

"He was dead when he got to the hospital," said Heverin's brother, Paul Vrem.

Vrem said he learned of his brother's death after driving to Dover Behavioral to pick him up for a dental appointment.

"They told me that he had choked on a grilled cheese sandwich and that they were administering CPR," Vrem said.

DBHS chief operating officer William Weaver and other clinic officials did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment.

Colin Faulkner, director of public safety for Kent County, said paramedics were dispatched to Dover Behavioral Health shortly before 12:30 p.m. in response to a report of a person choking.

"It would appear that he went into cardiac arrest, full arrest, as the result of an unresolved choking incident," Faulkner said.

Jay Lynch, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Social Services, confirmed Heverin's death.

Heverin's mother, Dianne Vrem, said Dover Behavioral officials kept family members in a waiting room until Heverin had been taken away by ambulance, and that Kent General officials also refused her request to be with her son.

"I just wanted to hold him and let him know that his mom was there," she said.

A spokeswoman for Kent General did not immediately return a telephone message Monday afternoon.

Last week, Heverin was the subject of an Associated Press article describing the bureaucratic limbo in which his criminal past and his disease — an incurable, degenerative neurological disorder that also killed his father and other family members — had left him.

Officials at Dover Behavioral, a short-stay psychiatric facility where Heverin had been admitted last summer for treatment of depression, had sought and received court permission to discharge him, arguing that he is not mentally ill. He remained at the facility as his guardianship case worked its way through the court system.

Even though a court declared Heverin "a disabled person" who was "unable to act in his own best interest," health and social service officials refused to place him in state-run long-term care facility. They argued that he was neither developmentally disabled nor mentally ill.

The primary reason for their opposition, however, was that Heverin was a registered sex offender. He had twice been convicted of unlawful sexual contact, incidents that his supporters believe stemmed from the effects of Huntington's disease, a hereditary disorder that has been linked with inappropriate sexual behavior.

Dover Behavioral officials said they had tried repeatedly for more than a year to find placement options for Heverin, but no facility was willing to take him.

Kristopher Starr, an attorney appointed as a fact-finder in Heverin's guardianship case, submitted a report earlier this month excoriating state officials for refusing to place Heverin in a skilled nursing facility, at least not until he is "bedridden."

"They finally got what they wanted; they won't have to deal with the problem anymore," Paul Vrem said Monday.