A lawsuit filed in Orinda teen’s party death: too bad it had to get to this point

Marianne Payne, the mother of 16-year-old Joseph Loudon, has taken a step that isn’t surprising. It’s what many expected. She has filed a lawsuit against the teen-aged Orinda “hosts” of an unsupervised party where her son fatally collapsed died on May 23.


News reports say Payne filed a wrongful death suit earlier this month against her former neighbors on Hillcrest Drive, Alexandra and Patrick P.J. Gabrielli, their mother, Isabel Hamilton, and stepfather, Scott Hamilton. She also filed suit against another local youth alleged to have purchased alcohol for the party. She says the death of her son, a popular, athletic Miramonte High sophomore, was caused by the negligence on the part of the teenagers who provided the alcohol and of the Hamiltons, who were out of town when the party was held without their permission.

Payne evidently feels she needs to take this route. While Payne has not commented on the suit, I doubt she’s motivated by money. Given what she’s said in the past, she’s probably hoping that a suit will yield more answers to what happened to her son that night. She’s said before publicly that she didn’t feel like the official criminal and coroner’s investigations provided her with those answers. She believes that parents of some of the students at the party got their kids to “lawyer up” and refuse to take responsibility.

The cause of Joe’s death remains unknown, largely because of a series of missteps by police and confusion over a prescription drug found in Joe’s system during the autopsy. That drug was later revealed to have been injected to prepare his body for organ donation. The autopsy also found only a small amount of alcohol in his system; authorities believe the boy may have suffered from an undiagnosed heart ailment.

Perhaps this suit is Payne’s way of assigning blame and punishing the people she believes are responsible for her Joe's death—making them feel some of the bottomless pain of grief she’s living with.

Joe had stopped at the party that night, and was there less than two hours when he collapsed in a hallway in front of other guests. He was briefly revived, said he was okay, and helped into a bedroom to rest. But when left alone, Joe vomited and choked.

Sometime during all this, Orinda police officers came to the house following neighbors’ reports of noise. Officers were apparently a few feet away from where Joe was in distress, but were sent away by Alexandra Gabrielli, who said she would make sure to quiet things down.

After finding Joe, some partygoers tried to perform CPR on Joe and called 911. Friends of the Gabrielli family say it was PJ who tried to administer CPR, and it was Alexandra who said to call 911.

But it was too late. Joe was pronounced dead at Kaiser hospital in Walnut Creek.

P.J. and Alexandra Gabrielli were never criminally charged with causing Joe’s death. Last month, they pleaded no contest to charges of furnishing alcohol to minors. They were each ordered to serve 200 hours of community service and to pay a $1,000 fine.

People close to the Gabriellis said that the two siblings and their mother and stepfather were devastated by Joe's death. They also said the Gabrielli siblings made many efforts to express remorse to Joe's family, including writing letters to the priest at the Catholic Church both families once attended.

This is a tragic case—and not just because a boy died or because here are other teens in and around Orinda who, I’m told, are living with an incredible amount of grief. It’s awful because of the anger, bitterness, and nastiness it has generated within this community. I engaged in some of that negativity myself, getting angry, writing in a heated, judgmental way about the case. I don't like that I did that.

I received lots of e-mails and phone calls filled with grief, anger and recriminations. But the comments were not so much about what I wrote, but about what everyone involved was writing and saying about everyone else.

Still, I had the pleasure of having a lawyer working with one of the parties write a letter to my home and to my employer, calling me a cyber-bully. But this lawyer, in my opinion, didn’t necessarily take the high road either, engaging in what amounted to a form of legal bullying.

That’s the level that this case has sunk.

I thought that we were all supposed to be such nice, compassionate people here in the suburbs.

It turns out that what I wrote was tame in comparison to what others on both sides posted on my blog, on the East Bay Daze, and now on the East Bay Daze blog on SFGate. In the past, there were some nasty opinions hurled at the kids at the party and the hosts; now Marianne Payne is in for it.

I’ve been sympathetic to Marianne Payne and have hoped she would get the answers she needed. Some say she already knows what happened and is driven by her grief and her own denial to lash out in this way. News reports note that her ex-husband, Joe’s father, has not joined in her suit.

The “system” didn’t help matters in this case. I can’t imagine, if it were my son who died, wanting to get any more involved in this system, with more lawyers and more court dates. Litigation is draining and soul-sucking, no matter how righteous your cause may be.

But it’s not my son who died. I’m just sorry that this grieving mother feels she has to go down this route.

The mystery of why Joe Loudon died deepens, and his family is not going to "let it pass."

The family of Joe Loudon, the 16-year-old Miramonte High sophomore who collapsed at an Orinda party on May 23 and died, received more heartbreak this week.

It came in the form of a letter than answers one key question about the coroner's findings from his autopsy. Unfortunately, that answer pretty much compounds the mystery even more, over how and why this healthy, athletic boy suddenly collapsed at a party.

This letter also shakes the family's faith in how authorities have investigated Joe's death. Actually, this faith has pretty much eroded to nothing in the months since Joe's death. And despite "extreme pressure" from some members of the Orinda community to "just let this pass," Joe's family will not stop seeking answers.

"We continue to draw strength from the courageous [other] members of the community who share our sorrow and outrage at this terrible situation," says Joe's uncle and godfather, Thomas Payne. "Over and over again, we hear from mothers of elementary school kids--who are frightened that their kids will grow up in a community with no moral compass. Some ask what they can do, and many are taking action. We are very thankful for this."

This above-mentioned letter comes from the Northern California Transplant Bank, and it clears up the mystery of how an unusual prescription drug, papaverine--which is used to help people with circulatory problems--made its way into the Joe's system.

The Contra Costa County Coroner's Office had earlier ruled that Joe did not die of binge drinking, as initially suspected. As has been earlier reported, quite a number of teens were drinking at this party, hosted by a Hillcrest Drive neighbor and rugby teammate.

Rather, the coroner's office concluded that high levels of the drug, combined with some alcohol, but not a high amount, caused Joe to vomit and to choke.

The thing is, no one had any clue as to how or why Joe would have this drug into his system. Back when the coroner's findings were released, Orinda Police Chief Bill French said papaverine is not a drug his department had seen being used recreationally. However, the suspicion of recreational use lingered. Either Joe took it himself or someone slipped it to him, or so the speculation went. His family hired a private investigator and put out a plea to the Orinda community, asking if anyone had a prescription for papaverine. Maybe, the family thought, one of Joe's friends or classmates had found the drug in the family medicine cabinet and decided to give it a try for fun, or they mistook it for another prescription drug to get high on.

It turns out that Joe didn't take the drug himself, and no one slipped it to him. That's what Joe's family learned this week from the letter sent by the transplant bank.

Allen Brown, executive director of the transplant bank, said staffers at the Oakland organization introduced papaverine to Joseph's system to prepare his vessels for the tissue-donation process, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Because the drug is a vasodilator, it relaxes the muscles in blood vessels and makes them bigger.

The blood samples that the coroner analyzed for the autopsy were provided by the transplant bank after staffers had injected the drug into his system. "We take full responsibility for (the autopsy) finding," Brown wrote in a letter to Joseph's mother, Marianne Payne. "I want to formally apologize."

So, now the coroner's findings on cause of death is in doubt. For Joe's mother, Marianne Payne, and her brother, Thomas Payne, news about the mistake related to the papaverine and the blood samples just adds to their grief.

"All I can say is: yes, we have lost all confidence in the Orinda police the corner's office and the Sheriff's deapartment," Thomas Payne said in an e-mail to me. He added that Joe had no physical conditions that would have contributed to his death.

The family also believes that a serious crime or crimes was committed: "Alcohol was provided by adults to Joe who was a minor. In California, a death caused in the commission of a crime is the definition of manslaughter."

So far, police are pursuing criminal charges against three people, including the party's 18-year-old host, Patrick Gabrielli, and Gabrielli's sister. But not for manslaughter--for allegedly furnishing alcohol to minors.

Adding to the Paynes' frustration is that the information in the police report, which they finally received, is "quite sketchy and provides no timeline," Thomas Payne said. "It especially does not provide information on the long period of time after Joe collapsed until 911 was finally called. We believe this time period coincided with at least one visit from the Orinda police who did not enter the [home of the hosts] while Joe was either dead or dying."

I earlier reported that police twice visited the Hillcrest Drive home the night Joe collapsed. French says police first went to the Gabrielli's home at around 10:30 p.m. Gabrielli was hosting the party while his parents were out of town. French says officers, there to investigate a noise complaint, spoke to a girl, supposedly Gabrielli's sister. The officers saw "nothing unusual," including no minors drinking alcohol, and left.

It turns out that there were quite a number of teens at the home, and quite a bit of drinking going on. Payne says the family has learned that kids at the party tried and were successful at reviving Joe after he collapsed in a hallway: "So, in reality he died twice that night."

Mom tries to break through Orinda’s Code of Silence to find answers to the mystery of her son’s death

A grieving parent trying to make sense of the sudden, unexpected death of her child.

Unfortunately, this scenario plays out more often than we’d like to think. Or, maybe it’s that I’ve had more contact than most with a mother or father suffering the worst pain imaginable: the loss of their child.

I used to cover crime in Richmond, and, as you know, there was and continues to be too much killing going on in that town—mostly of young males, in their teens and early 20s. They usually died in what you could call street shootings—homicides that detectives loosely categorized gang- or drug-related. These victims also usually came from poor families, and are African-American, Latino or Southeast Asian.

These victims usually left behind a mother, and sometimes a father was in the picture, too. And the grief that tormented these parents was compounded by the fact that it was typicaly hard to get information about why this terrible thing had happened to their child and to their family.

You see, in the impoverished neighborhoods of Richmond, and in urban areas around the country, a Code of Silence persists around most crimes, notably homicide. A notable example: A young man, who was 17 or 18, was gunned down in the middle of a weekday afternoon in a public Richmond park. Dozens of people of all ages were around, and the boy was probably with friends. Someone in this crowd presumably saw the shooters, as well as if they arrived and left in a car. The victim’s friends might have even known the shooters’ names, or at least knew whether he had done something to tick anyone off.

The boy’s mother knew her son wasn’t a perfect angel. At the same time, she knew him in the way mothers often know their sons—as a loving boy full of promise. She wanted to know who and why someone took him from her. But when police started canvassing the neighborhood and interviewing the boy’s friends, they were met with shrugs and stony silence. To some extent, the reluctance to cooperate that these Richmond detectives encountered stems from deep-seated mistrust between police and the poor, minority residents of such neighborhoods. In any event, when I left that job a couple years later, that boy’s murder was still unsolved, as were so many others in the land of the Code of Silence.

Now, I turn my attention to the more recent death of a boy. But he didn’t die in some inner-city gang or drug shooting. He died at a party in a home in affluent—and largely white—Orinda.
Still, as with crimes in certain tough, violent neighborhoods of Richmond, a Code of Silence also surrounds this tragedy.

"There are kids and adults in our community who most definitely know what happened," says Marianne Payne, the mother of Joseph Loudon, the 16-year-old Orinda boy who died. "They are remaining silent at great cost to Joe. He deserves the truth."

On the night of May 23, Joseph collapsed at a party hosted by an 18-year-old neighbor and rugby teammate. After someone finally noticed Joseph passed out and called 911, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Joseph was to start his junior year at Miramonte High School, one of the top-ranked schools in the Bay Area. He was also an athlete. “Joe was a wonderful child and how he lived his life mattered greatly to him. He was an individual with great character and integrity,” Payne writes in an e-mail to me.

Payne adds that this past week her son would have been on a Boy Scout backpacking trip in New Mexico: “It is what he described as the ‘pinacle of all scout experiences’—a 14-day trek through the wilderness. He had been looking forward to it for years. We shopped at the REI sale on Mother's Day--and his new backpack and boots sit in my room, tags still attached as it is just too painful to think of returning them."

For a couple months, it was widely assumed that Joseph, like a fair number of teens in our community, had engaged in binge drinking and died of alcohol poisoning. Then, the coroner’s report came back with news that refuted that assumption, while raising other puzzling questions about his cause of death.

It turns out that, yes, Joseph had consumed a small amount of alcohol. But actually, what triggered the series of physical reactions that killed him—he officially died of asphyxiation after choking on his own vomit—was that his body contained high levels of a drug for which Joseph had no prescription or medical use. It’s also a medication that police had not come across before, specifically as a prescription drug that teens and adults might misuse for recreational purposes.

The drug is Papaverine, a vasodilator. That is, it helps people with circulatory problems. The newspapers have also made much of the fact that it is used by men who have difficulty with erectile function.

Payne has publicly vented her frustration with how Orinda police have handled the investigation. She sent a letter to Contra Costa District Attorney Bob Kochly, listing what she considered to be basic investigative steps that police failed to take, some of which the blogger the East Bay Daze mentions here.

She says she is disappointed by Kochly’s response: “While I understand Mrs. Payne's frustration, some of the questions she has may never be fully answered. This is simply the reality in many criminal investigations, regardless of how intensively the case is investigated."

To some extent, Kochly is right in saying that questions remain unanswered in many criminal investigations. That's certainly the case for crimes that occur in communities where the Code of Silence is a way of life.

But is the Code of Silence a way of life in Orinda, too?

I thought those of us who live in the East Bay suburbs--well we're comfortably assimilated in mainstream culture and are raised to believe in our criminal justice system and to have faith in police and other authorities. And we’re good, decent people right? We care about our kids, and those of our neighbors. We want to protect these kids and step forward and help when bad things happen to them. We don't live by a Code of Silence, and we don't tolerate disrespect for the law.

Right?

I’m sure the parents of Joseph’s friends, the parents whose kids attend Miramonte or were at the party where Joseph died, like to think of themselves as good, decent people. They like to think that they are raising good, decent kids.

Payne has hired a private investigator to find anyone in the area who had a prescription for Papaverine. One theory is that someone raided their parents’ or grandparents’ medicine cabinet for drugs to have fun with. Maybe someone brought some Papaverine pills to the party, not quite knowing what they are used for, and somehow this drug got into Joe’s body. He either took it knowingly, a possibility that Payne disputes, or someone slipped it to him without his knowledge.

Doc Gurly, the medical blogger for SFGate.com, wrote the following about possible circumstances surrounding Joseph’s death: “Working in a clinic that sees many people who use recreational substances, and also living in a suburban community like Joseph's—one thing is clear to me. People often take pills even when they're not sure exactly what the pill is. The person who's most likely to fall for a ‘bait and switch’ type of pill (someone sells it, promising Oxycontin, when the pill is actually a diuretic...) is the inexperienced user. Furthermore, people, in general, are quite trusting when it comes to taking random pills from people they know. Finally, suburban homes are goldmines of medicine cabinet wealth. Grandpa might be taking both Demerol and papaverine—and someone raided Grandpa's cabinet, not realizing he kept both those pills in the same bottle.

It seems clear that someone in the community knows something about how this drug got into Joseph’s body.

Payne just wants to find out why: “Why do I need answers? Every parent in Lamorinda should be seeking answers. This could very well have been anyone's son and without answers it may very well happen again. The truth must be known.”

Yes, she’s right. What happened to Joseph could happen to any of our kids, including my son in a few years—sooner than I’d like to acknowledge.

Payne’s quest for information probably stems from other needs as well. A terrible thing happened to her child. A terrible thing has happened to her and her family. Something I learned from those parents in Richmond: When terrible things happen to people, they often need information about why and how. Those answers can be crucial for some parents to piece together some narrative of the terrible thing that has happened. This narrative helps them make sense out of the chaos that surrounds the traumatic event. It can also help survivors endure their grief, lessen some of their suffering, and lead to what’s called “closure.”

I’m not sure how much closure there ever will be for Marianne Payne and to what extent she’ll ever be able to get over her grief. Sadly, I don’t know how a parent ever gets over the sudden, unexpected death of a child. Still, it’s likely that having more information—more than what she has now—will help Payne. If only a little.

So, if you know something, contact Payne’s private investigator, Mike Mahoney, at (925) 648-3605. You can also visit the website that Loudon's friends and family have set up on behalf on this inquiry.

Update: Orinda teen choked on own vomit after mixing medication and alchol

Police said Wednesday that Joseph Loudon did not poison himself by drinking too much at a neighbor's party May 23, but from a dangerous mix of alcohol and a prescription opiate medication used to increase blood flow. In fact, the blood-alcohol level of the 16-year-old Miramonte High star rugby player was "very low," police said.

An autopsy by the Contra Costa County coroner determined that he had died of "asphyxia due to aspiration of gastric contents due to alcohol and papaverine ingestion," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Police, however, say that Loudon did not have a prescription for the drug, papaverine, which is used for patients with circulation problems. They also are not sure if he took it orally or by injection and have not heard of any recreational use of the drug.

Meanwhile, Lamorinda blogger The East Bay Daze has Orinda Police Chief William French confirming that police twice visited the Hillcrest Drive home the night 16-year-old sophomore Loudon collapsed, after an evening of reportedly drinking heavily. French says police first went to the home of Patrick Gabrielli at around 10:30 p.m. Gabrielli is the 18-year-old neighbor of Loudon's who was hosting the party while his parents were out of town.


French says officers, there to investigate a noise complaint, spoke to a girl, supposedly Gabrielli's sister. The officers saw "nothing unusual," including no minors drinking alcohol, and left.

About an hour later, someone called 911 to say that a young partygoer--Loudon--had collapsed and was unresponsive. Loudon was taken to Kaiser medical center in Walnut Creek where he was pronounced dead.

Three people have been arrested in connection with Loudon's death, including Gabrielli, known as P.J., who was arrested on suspicion of furnishing alcohol to minors and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was released on $5,000 bail.

Police also arrested a 16-year-old boy on two counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, both misdemeanors, and a 22-year-old Rohnert Park man who was allegedly running a fake ID operation that he was selling statewide, including, possibly, to teens in Lamorinda.