David L. Kalm, a 56-year-old disabled Merchant Marine sailor, says he was nearly beaten to death by prison guards at the Sussex Correctional Institution near Georgetown last October.
Kalm, who was serving a 60-day sentence for DUI, said two guards wearing black gloves took turns pounding his head into a cinder-block wall until he passed out.
"They really seemed to enjoy smashing my head and my face into the wall," he said. "My ears looked like elephant ears when I came out of the hospital."
In written reports, the guards said Kalm's injuries were self-inflicted, and Kalm acknowledges an earlier physical confrontation with guards after he refused to be moved to a cellblock where he feared being harmed by other inmates. However, Christiana Hospital medical staff members who examined Kalm concluded that the injuries were suffered during an "assault."
"Anatomically, it could not have been possible" for the injuries to be self-inflicted, said Dr. Irwin Lifrak, a physician who has been an expert witness in several wrongful-death lawsuits. He was asked to review the medical records by an attorney working with Kalm.
The medical records, which Kalm provided to The News Journal, show that he suffered a concussion, a moderate coma, a broken nose, an eyeball that was oozing blood, two broken ribs, a punctured lung, bruising around an eye, extensive bruising to his face, head and ears, and two pharyngeal tears in his throat. Lifrak and another medical professional say the tears were caused by repeated blows to his neck or by an object such as a nightstick being shoved down his throat.
Last month, the FBI began collecting preliminary information on the incident, and the Department of Correction has begun an internal investigation.
After the last confrontation with guards, Kalm said, he was denied medical care for 13 hours by a prison system that was found by the U.S. Justice Department late last year to have committed numerous civil rights violations because of inadequate medical care going back years.
Kalm spent seven days recovering in hospitals.
"There are telephone numbers I've known my whole life that I can't remember anymore," he said.
Correction Commissioner Carl Danberg, who learned of the incident this month on his second day as commissioner, ordered his Internal Affairs unit to investigate Kalm's allegations and asked prison health director James Welch to review the inmate's medical records, along with assistance from "outside physicians."
Attorney General Beau Biden III declined to comment because of the internal investigation.
Kalm was released from Sussex Correctional Institution in November. In early January, he contacted Dover attorney Steve Hampton, who represented the family of Anthony Pierce, who became known as "the brother with two heads" as an inmate at Sussex Correctional Institution. Pierce died of a brain tumor while his condition was mishandled by the prison medical staff. In October 2005, the state settled the wrongful death lawsuit in a confidential agreement.
Kalm, who is legally disabled, has a heart condition, high blood pressure, stomach problems and arthritis in his spine that aggravates his sciatic nerve, causing intense, shooting pain down his leg, according to his medical records. Kalm's lungs were damaged while serving in the Merchant Marine, so he uses a "breathing machine" daily to treat a condition similar to asthma.
He also has struggled with alcohol. In 2006, he was charged on three separate counts of driving under the influence, in addition to an offensive touching charge from 2004. He pleaded guilty to DUI in May, but two more DUI cases are pending.
When he reported to prison late last year, because of his health problems, he went to the prison infirmary. One night, he claims, a nurse gave him the wrong medication, which made him ill. The next day, Kalm complained to a doctor.
The next night, the nurse was outraged, Kalm said.
"That's how this all got started," he said.
At around 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 6, guards tried to move him to a cellblock where he feared being victimized because guards had spread a rumor that he was gay.
Kalm protested the transfer in a supervisor's office.
"I was freaking. I was scared for my life," he said.
According to Sgt. Daniel R. Kobus' Oct. 26 disciplinary report, Kalm at the time was "acting funny, saying that someone was gonna hurt him, acting all crazy."
Kalm told a reporter that he grabbed the supervisor's desk to avoid being sent to a cell.
"Then the door flies open and a whole pile of guards run in, spray me with Mace and start punching me," he said. "I grabbed onto a computer and the wires. When they're dragging me out of there, the computer comes off the desk and hits a guard."
Kalm said he was taken to a dark cell where two guards punched him and slammed his head into the walls.
"It was a real strange room," he said. "There wasn't no window there, and they'd come through and spray Mace into the room. They'd make me stick my arms out the food slot and twist them, which really hurt. I still have arm pain today."
"The next thing I remember was a doc waking me up in Christiana, asking me if I know what day it is," he said. Medical records show Kalm was suffering a concussion and a moderate coma.
None of the seven guards named in department reports on the incidents chose to comment to The News Journal, according to correction officials.
Guards' version
In another document, dated 20 days after the assault, several guards report finding Kalm "banging his head and fist off of the wall." He was "still being very combative," the document says. Kalm denies harming himself.
"I never banged my head on the cell wall," he said. "They banged my head on the cell wall."
At the hospital, the guards told the staff Kalm had stuck a pencil down his throat, causing the pharyngeal tears, but the pencil was not mentioned in the guards' report.
Dr. Lifrak, who practices internal medicine in Wilmington and also is a lawyer, questioned whether Kalm could have damaged his own throat.
"The esophagus is behind the trachea -- the food pipe behind the air pipe," he said. "If a person were to hurt or stab themselves in the throat, they would have to go through the trachea before getting to the esophagus. It's just not possible."
Lifrak maintains that the pharyngeal tears were caused by blows or an object inserted through Kalm's mouth.
"I don't remember anything getting stuck in my mouth before I passed out," Kalm said. "But afterwards, they could have done anything to me."
A Christiana psychiatrist noted that Kalm was in "fear for his life, believes prison officials and other inmates plan him further harm, states he is being denied access to a phone to call family or an attorney, and prison officials have forbidden me to make a call on his behalf."
Kalm said he still suffers from the alleged assault.
"I get two different types of headaches. They're crippling," he said. "And I still wake up in the middle of the night in extreme fear, soaking wet."