Kevin Page’s flashbacks come at night: Being strapped to a hospital bed, with a nurse’s hands wrapped around his chin to keep his head from flailing. Feeling like he was suffocating and not knowing where he was, or why.
“There were so many hands on me, I just wanted them to let me go,” he said of the night in 2020 when he landed in a Seattle-area emergency room for a mental health evaluation. Nurses called for security after he grew upset, swore and threatened staff, and tried to leave, according to hospital records. “I felt like I was going to die,” he said.
Engulfed in panic and immobilized, Page spat — landing saliva in the eyes and on the mask of one nurse, and on the sleeve of another.
Just hours earlier, police had sent Page to the ER believing he was having a psychiatric crisis and was a danger to himself or others. After he spat, officers from the same department returned to pull him out of treatment and take him to jail instead. Prosecutors in King County, which includes Seattle, then charged Page with felony assault.