Sowers' injuries were severe, doctor says

Listen to this article

A neurologist who treated Zach Sowers following his brutal attack in a street robbery last summer has challenged statements by a high-ranking official in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office regarding Sowers’ medical condition.

Dr. Marek Mirski, director of the Neuroscience Critical Care Division and vice chairman of anesthesia and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a July 7 letter to Margaret T. Burns, chief of communications and governmental affairs in the state’s attorney’s office, that Burns’ comments reported in the June issue of Exhibit A, contained “gross inaccuracies.”

In the article in the monthly news magazine on legal issues, Burns complained that the victim’s widow, Anna Sowers, refused to order an autopsy after her husband died from the injuries March 25. Prosecutors, Burns said, disputed some of Sowers’ injuries received suffered in the June 1, 2007, attack near Patterson Park.

Burns told Exhibit A in a May 8 interview: “The truth of the matter is, Zach’s injury was on one side of his face and he looked like a sleeping baby when he arrived” [at the hospital]. The injuries were not consistent with this horrible pummeling — it appeared that when he fell down, he collapsed after being hit. We know he was kicked, he fell and hit his head, he fell between two cars. He probably injured something in the fall or he had a pre-existing condition. There was no evidence of this vicious beating, no evidence of stomping.”

In his letter to Burns, the first public statements regarding Sowers’ condition by a professional caregiver, Dr. Mirski rejected Burns’ comments.

“His condition was highly critical and near death from severe head lacerations and intracranial trauma. He was not, and could not in the remotest sense as reported by the media to look as he were ‘sleeping like a baby,’” Dr. Mirski wrote.

“He was in a deep coma, unarousable to even the deepest of stimulation. His face and scalp were entirely disfigured and discolored with bruising, swelling and lacerations. His neck was in a collar, an orogastric tube was in place, and he had an endotracheal breathing tube down his mouth as he was assisted by a ventilator,” the letter continued.

Dr. Mirski described Sowers’ physical state following the attack based on medical records from the neuroscience critical care unit: “On his scalp and face, eyes are swollen shut and lids are purple, with difficulty in opening eyes to examine pupils which are non-reactive. Radiographically, his scalp region was further described, extensive soft tissue swelling is seen with subcutaneous soft tissue emphysema (air) around the calvarium … .”

The letter addressed the controversy that stemmed from the article in the June issue of Exhibit A. Anna Sowers unsuccessfully sought an explanation and public apology from Burns and the state’s attorney’s office, resulting in an ongoing protest on www.zachsowers.com, the Zach Sowers Web site.

“Even after the complaint was made by Ms. Cheng [Sowers] regarding the erroneous statements, that continued remarks were made from your staff that misrepresented the documented clinical history,” Mirski’s letter continued. “I am saddened and appalled that our justice system is capable of such callous commentary with little or no regard for the grievous suffering that has taken place in light of Mr. Sowers’ heinous murder, and the torment such slanderous inferences have now added to the family’s coping processes.”

Burns declined to comment on Mirski’s statements regarding Sowers’ medical crisis following his attack. She did not return a call seeking comment and her assistant, Joe Sviatko, said, “We’re not commenting on this case anymore.”

“The state’s attorney [Patricia Jessamy] told us that anything we say will be misrepresented, misquoted or misconstrued by the public,” Sviatko said.

Mirski said in an interview last week that the critical care team tending to Sowers had held some optimism for a recovery. The neurologist said he met with a prosecutor from Jessamy’s office “at length” last year to discuss Sowers’ medical condition. He said he told the prosecutor, whose name he could not recall, that the medical team treating Sowers “could not exclude the possibility that he could heal.”

“I wasn’t sure you could get the person at that time on a charge of attempted murder,” Mirski recalled telling the prosecutor.

He explained that an MRI of Sowers’ brain showed “much of the gray matter looking fine, so if he did wake up, he could be functional.”

However, as time went on, Mirski said, neurologists discovered that Sowers had a “microscopic injury not seen in the scans,” which proved deadly. Sowers, Mirski added, had also suffered a stroke in two areas of his brain while in the coma.

Anna Sowers, 28, has vowed to continue her push for an apology from the state’s attorney’s office.

She has vocally protested the ongoing violence in Baltimore where 282 murders were recorded last year along with more than 600 non-fatal shootings. In addition, Sowers is meeting with state legislators to sculpt proposed legislation she wants to call Zach’s Law. It would allow prosecutors to levy murder charges while a victim lies in a near-death state. Zach died 10 months after his attack, from which he never regained consciousness. The four teens who attacked her husband entered into plea agreements in December for lesser charges and can’t be charged with murder under the terms of the plea agreement.

Of the clash with Burns, Sowers said: “It just makes my blood boil that she can say these things and get away with it. After everything I’m trying to do … making [the city] safer and better for others. I just feel like a thorn in their side instead of their ally.”