by Chuck Sharman

On March 4, 2026, the Board of Commissioners of Kansas’ Sedgwick County approved a $10.3 million payout to settle claims filed by the survivors of a 17-year-old who died under a pile-on of guards at the County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center (JIAC) in Wichita in September 2021. The settlement included $8.3 million previously awarded to the Estate of Cedric Lofton by a federal jury that found the five guards liable in his death.

Lofton was arrested by Wichita Police Department (WPD) officers responding to a 911 call from his foster father, Tanea Randolph, on September 23, 2021. Fearing that Lofton was experiencing a mental health crisis, Randolph had earlier driven him to a behavioral health clinic. But Lofton ran away before staff could evaluate him. Randolph returned home and called the state Department of Children and Families (DCF), which advised him to call the WPD.

When the cops arrived, Lofton was back at home, but he refused to go with them to the hospital. For the next 40 minutes, they observed his erratic and paranoid behavior before a WPD sergeant decided to take Lofton to the hospital anyway. That led to a struggle. Lofton was put in a restraint device. Because he had punched a cop in the process, the sergeant decided to take him to the JIAC on suspicion of assaulting a law enforcement officer.

Arriving in the early morning hours of September 24, Lofton was taken to a JIAC holding room, still in restraints. A WPD cop told guard Jason Stepien that the teen had been “arrested for battering a law enforcement officer, being combative on scene, and because a family member reported that Lofton had used the drug ‘K2’ in the past month,” as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit later recalled. However, “none of the officers knew whether Lofton had used any drugs that evening.”

While Lofton negotiated his way out of the restraints with some of the WPD cops, others engaged in a back-and-forth with Stepien over an intake questionnaire, apparently to find the “right” answers that obviated the need for a medical release before Lofton could be booked into the lockup. With that out of the way, the WPD officers left Lofton at the JIAC. But they retained custody, so the JIAC staff could not transport him elsewhere. The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas later summarized what surveillance video recorded next.

“At 4:20 a.m., Stepien released Lofton from the holding room.” But the teen refused to sit as ordered, so “[a]t 4:25 a.m., Stepien signaled to [fellow guard Brenton] Newby to join him.” A minute later, they “attempted to place Lofton in an over/under escort hold … [and] Lofton freed his right arm from the hold and punched Stepien in the face, knocking Stepien’s glasses off.” A struggle ensued, continuing until 4:27 a.m., when guard supervisors Karen Conklin and William Buckner arrived. They “were able to free Newby from Lofton’s grasp and attempted to restrain Lofton in a seated position on the concrete bench in the holding room.”

When that proved too difficult, they took the teen to the floor and shackled his legs. Stepien held his ankles, while Newby and Buckner each held an arm. Conklin either held his hips or lay on his back—the parties had differing interpretations of the video. Importantly, the video showed that “[f]rom approximately 4:34 a.m. to 4:51 a.m., [the four guards] remained in those relative positions,” while Lofton went motionless for increasingly lengthy periods. Guard Benito Medoza arrived then to relieve Stepien, who left to call WPD cops to return for Lofton. Not quite 15 minutes later, the boy was finally handcuffed and stopped resisting.

“Buckner and Newby left the holding room at 5:08 a.m. to go to the restroom and clean blood off their arms,” the district court recalled. Five minutes later, Conklin realized that Lofton was unresponsive and began chest compressions. Stepien called 911, and emergency responders arrived to transport Lofton to a hospital, where he died two days later, on September 26. An autopsy concluded his death was a homicide caused by “complications of cardiopulmonary arrest sustained after physical struggle while restrained in the prone position.”

Suit Filed, Decided, Appealed
to Tenth Circuit

With the aid of attorneys from Kuhlman Law Firm, LLC in Kansas City, as well as Hart McLaughlin & Eldridge, LLC and Action Injury Law Group, LLC in Chicago, Lofton’s brother, Marquan Teetz, as representative of his Estate, filed suit in the district court in June 2022. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, he accused the City of Wichita and Sedgwick County, as well as their cops and juvenile detention guards, of violating Lofton’s civil rights with use of excessive force. The complaint also lodged state-law claims of negligence and battery.

The district court dismissed claims against the WPD officers in July 2024. The remaining Defendant JIAC guards claimed qualified immunity (QI), but in a ruling three months later, the district court rejected their claim. They then timely appealed to the Tenth Circuit, which affirmed the denial on June 23, 2025.

“Defendants primarily assert that the district court wrongly relied on an ‘inconclusive’ video,” the appellate Court recalled, “and that the record ‘blatantly … contradicts” … [the] finding that a dispute of material fact exists as to whether Mr. Lofton was subdued at some point in the encounter.” But the “blatant contradiction” exception “generally applies only where ‘[d]ocumentary evidence’ such as videos or photographs ‘utterly discredit[s]’ the version of events found by the district court,” the Court continued, citing Vette v. Sanders, 989 F.3d 1154 (10th Cir. 2021). It “does not apply where documentary evidence could plausibly support two competing versions of events,” as in this case, the Court declared.

Turning to the issue of QI, the Court applied the four-factor test from Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989) to determine whether the force used on Lofton was excessive. Because he had struck one of the guards, the first factor—severity of the crime—weighed against Plaintiff. But in the second-factor examination of whether Defendants “were in danger at the precise moment they used force,” a reasonable jury could conclude that they were not after 39 minutes of forceful restraint like Lofton was subjected to. Similarly, the third factor, whether Lofton was “actively resisting or attempting to evade arrest by flight,” weighed against Defendants because the video showed long periods when Lofton was not moving at all, and his restraint made any attempt at flight “frankly impossible,” the Court said.

But was the excessive force reasonable? The Court cited Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent in Lombardo v. City of St. Louis, 594 U.S. 464 (2021) to hold that “the use of prone restraint—even where a suspect is ‘resisting’ to some degree—becomes unreasonable where officers become aware the suspect is experiencing life-threatening harm but nonetheless continue to apply the restraint.” Here, the Court said, the decision to continue using force on Lofton was not “a split-second decision in a life-or-death situation,” so a jury could find it was unreasonable. The cited case law also put Defendants on notice that their actions risked violating Lofton’s constitutional rights, so they were not entitled to QI. See: Teetz v. Stepien, 142 F.4th 705 (10th Cir. 2025).

Back at the district court, a jury was seated and trial began on January 21, 2026. When it concluded on February 4, jurors found that Newby, Conklin and Buckner were guilty of subjecting Lofton to excessively prolonged restraint. All three, along with Stepien, were also found guilty of using excessive force while he was restrained. All four of them, along with Mendoza, were found guilty of failing to intervene when it became clear he needed help. A total of $8.3 million was awarded in damages, including $1 million each for Lofton’s physical and emotional pain, plus $5 million for the loss of his life and $1.3 million in lost future earnings. The County quickly reached the $10.3 million settlement then before any additional award for legal fees and costs could be made, essentially capping them at $2 million. See: Teetz v. Stepien, USDC (D. Kan.), Case No. 6:22-cv-01134. 

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