THORNTON, Colo. — A Denver family believes the Thornton Police Department (TPD) did not do enough to prevent their loved one from dying. This comes after the family started digging into the case on their own.
In early May, 22-year-old Rayvon Lewis was found unconscious in the middle of a busy road.
"He loved his family a lot. He always wanted to help people no matter who you were.” said Carolina Lewis, Rayvon's mother. “It's very disheartening I wake up every day wishing that I could go see Rayvon".
Around 8:00 p.m. on May 4, Rayvon was found near East 88th Avenue and Washington Street in Thornton. He was barely breathing.
“They didn't let me go straight to his room so I knew something was wrong,” Carolina said as she fought back tears.
Rayvon was pronounced brain dead and taken off life support a few days later. He was an organ donor. His mother said he saved a total of five lives.
As the family grieved, their focus turned to what exactly happened. According to a witness on scene, a motorcyclist said Rayvon fell off of a truck. TPD released a bulletin in late May looking for that motorcyclist. Eventually, police found him and he stressed that is what he saw.
A Thornton traffic officer was assigned to the death investigation.
“He said that he's going on vacation and when he gets back, they're going to address it,” Carolina said.
But she told 9NEWS Investigates no one addressed it. Caroline along with her niece, Jeanne Yslas, started their own investigation. They visited businesses in the area as they searched for possible surveillance footage of Rayvon.
They found a 911 call.
The call was placed by someone working at a gas station about a mile from where Rayvon was found. The call was placed less than two hours before Rayvon was found brain dead in the middle of the road.
Thornton police were dispatched to perform a welfare check on Rayvon earlier in the day on May 4. The interaction was recorded on the officer’s body worn camera.
It lasted about 55 seconds and the department never told Carolina Lewis about it.
In the body worn camera video, an officer asks Rayvon if he is okay, stating they had reports that he was in the roadway. The officer told him multiple times to stay out of traffic.
“I don’t want you to get run over,” the officer yelled to Rayvon in the footage.
“If I get run over, I’d be dead,” Rayvon replied.
Less than two hours later, Lewis was found unresponsive about a mile away. Carolina struggled with the discovery of that welfare check.
“It made me sick to my stomach. It made me realize that the justice system that's in place they're not doing their job,” she said.
“It did make me angry,” Yslas said. “I felt like I was fighting to figure out what was going on and what happened to my cousin, and I felt like I was actually investigating the case myself.”
Detective Sargent Wayne Atkins and Detective Kevin Gifford took on the case after the family's discovery. They told 9NEWS had they taken the case earlier in the investigation, they would have told the family sooner.
When asked why the Lewis family was not told about that welfare check, Atkins believed there may have been communication issues.
“I got this case almost a month later afterwards,” Atkins said. “I think one of the things that kind of where we could have done better is the initial officer who was assigned to investigate this case was a traffic officer.”
Atkins explained the officer’s workload may have impacted how much time he was able to dedicate to the case.
“I think with his schedule and him working swing shift and working the end of the week, I don’t think the information was getting relayed back and forth to the family,” Atkins said. “I would have done some things a little bit differently if I had that case.”
What remains in dispute is that 55 second interaction. The Lewis family does not believe it was long enough to the responding officer to realize Rayvon needed more than a few words of advice.
“I absolutely do believe if they were asking more questions, really trying to find out what's wrong him, absolutely he would have been alive,” Carolina said.
According to Rayvon's autopsy report, the coroner believed Rayvon died of a head injury and was also intoxicated.
“Even the young man at the gas station knew, he automatically knew, there was something wrong with him,” Carolina said.
“I think looking at the interaction, I don't think that there were a lot of indicators there. Now, I wasn't there to get a smell or any of those other indicators of intoxication, but he did ask him, ‘Are you okay?’ And he said, 'Yes,'” Atkins said.
When asked if the officer could have asked more questions to Lewis to investigate what state he was in, Atkins said, “We think the officer did what he could at that time.”
9NEWS shared the body worn camera footage with David Thomas, a law enforcement expert. Thomas is also a former cop who disagreed with Atkins.
“I could tell you looking at the way he's standing, he's kind of unsteady on his feet, that, yeah, he's high or something's wrong with him. I can tell you that,” Thomas said. “From my perspective, I think I would have spent more time asking those questions, and to see if I can get the person a ride from the location where he was to get him off the streets.”
The Lewis family wishes officers did get their loved one off the street. Especially because of what first responders first noticed when they put Rayvon in their ambulance.
In body worn camera from when Rayvon was found in the roadway, an officer asks if he was the person from the welfare check. The officer said yes.
“We got a check wellbeing earlier for a guy that was drunk and stumbling into traffic,” the officer is heard explaining to paramedics. “So I don't know if that's what happened.”
“They said it out of their mouth they knew he was intoxicated,” Carolina said, sternly.
“You knew that prior to finding him in the street, but you did nothing to intervene,” Yslas said.
The Thornton Police Department believes they handled the welfare check correctly, but they do admit there are some things they could have done differently in the first 30 days of the investigation.
It's why Atkins said they're looking to change who and how these cases are handled in the future.
“Changes are coming,” he said. “I don’t know of any that have happened, but I do know those changes are taking place.”
Thornton police have not been able to find the truck Rayon reportedly fell off out of or the person that may have been driving it. According to police, there is only one person that saw this incident. They only have one account of what happened.
“The problem with it is it’s a white pick-up truck, two door [and] possible an extended cab. Could be anywhere from a 2002 to a 2015 Ford or Chevy pick-up truck,” Gifford said. “If you look outside right now, there is a ton of these white Ford and Chevy pick-up trucks so there’s not a whole lot for us to go after as far as finding that one individual truck.”
The Lewis family is continuing their investigation. They want to know for certain how Rayvon Lewis died. They are raising funds to hire a private investigator to take a closer look at the case.
“I mean we deserve to know, right?” Yslas said. “I feel like, in a sense, Rayvon wants us to know and as a family, I feel like we deserve to know what happened to him.”