An Atlanta veteran with dementia got lost going shopping. He died months after an officer body-slammed him

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March 28th, 2024

In this image from Birmingham Police Department body-camera video, Carl Grant sits on the porch of a stranger’s home in Birmingham, Ala., after police were called there on Feb. 2, 2020. Grant, a Vietnam War veteran with dementia, went out to shop for groceries near his suburban Atlanta home but became disoriented and ended up driving over two hours away. Police were called when he tried to get inside houses in Birmingham that he thought were his. (Birmingham Police Department via AP)

When Carl Grant awoke from emergency surgery and couldn’t move, he apologized to family gathered around his hospital bed.

In the fog of dementia, the U.S. Marine Corps veteran thought he’d been paralyzed in the Vietnam War. The truth: It was February 2020, he was 68, and a police officer had wrecked the spinal cord in his neck by slamming him onto an emergency room floor.

Grant’s family decided not to correct him. He was already confused enough.

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