By Maria Guinnip and JC Hallman, Oklahoma Watch
On May 20, Nikole Janowski, 31, was arrested by Guymon police while having an epileptic seizure. She was denied medications and held overnight in the Texas County jail. Charges against her were dropped, but not before responding police had endangered her life.
Janowski recalled that on May 20, she left home on foot after a disagreement with her partner. She had little memory of what happened before she was taken into custody, and believed she experienced what the Epilepsy Foundation described as a focal impaired awareness seizure, in which epileptic people, while seizing, may walk, talk and appear normal in many respects.
Six percent to 10% of epileptics go into psychosis, not being able to remember actions following a seizure. The Epilepsy Foundation report said the symptoms can be mistaken for daydreaming.
Afterward, the person may be tired or confused for about 15 minutes and may not return to normal function for hours, according to information published on the Epilepsy Foundation’s website.
Janowski’s arrest bore an uncanny resemblance to multiple cases of epileptics having been arrested during seizures in Florida in 2019, and to similar arrests of epileptics in California in 2020, Alabama in 2021, and Texas this year.
Further, Janowski’s arrest aligned with a nationwide trend of people who have epilepsy being arrested and jailed because of training gaps as identified in a 1990 House Judiciary Committee report.
Seven days after Janowski’s arrest, Oklahoma’s Dylan’s Law, a comprehensive bill designed to raise awareness of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, composed of elements of similar statutes from across the country, went into effect.
A 2014 study produced by the Epilepsy Foundation linked wrongful arrests to low societal awareness.
“Lack of public understanding has resulted in people with complex partial seizures being unfairly arrested (and sometimes seriously injured in the process) and prosecuted based on perceived intoxication, violence, disorderly conduct or indecent exposure — all because of involuntary actions produced by seizures,” the study said.
The primary champion of Dylan’s Law was Hannah Whitten, an Oklahoma City attorney whose brother, Dylan Cheatwood, a lifelong epilepsy sufferer, died of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy in 2017 at age 25. Whitten now sits on the boards of the Whitten-Newman Foundation and the Isaiah Stone Foundation, two Oklahoma City–based organizations dedicated, respectively, to stigma prevention and the pursuit of an epilepsy cure.
Additional steps to address epilepsy awareness in Oklahoma include the Seizure-Safe Schools Act, which mandated epilepsy training in schools; beginning in 2022, every school in the state was required to have at least one fully trained person on staff.
Despite those advances, Janowski’s arrest just days before the enactment of Dylan’s Law revealed to Whitten that there was still progress to be made for the 41,000 Oklahomans who suffer from epilepsy, particularly in regard to law enforcement.
“It goes to show there is so much more that needs to be done to protect people living with epilepsy,” Whitten said.
Unfairly Arrested
Oklahoma Watch obtained the incident report of Janowski’s arrest and compared it to the dashcam and body camera video of the three patrol officers who responded to a report of an individual making clumsy efforts to enter a home. Confused and seizing, Janowski had mistaken a house several blocks from where she lived for a place where she was welcome.
The report and the videos did not always agree as to what transpired.
The residents called police, and the report produced by Officer Juan Ramirez, who joined the Guymon police force in 2024, indicated that a 911 dispatcher told officers that Janowski was probably intoxicated.
Officers Terry Yowell and Trevor Bowers, on site before Ramirez, told Ramirez that Janowski was possibly under the influence of methamphetamine. Prior to Ramirez’s arrival, Bowers and Yowell spoke with the home’s residents, who suggested that Janowski was on drugs.
Early in the incident, on two of the body camera videos, Janowski can be heard saying that she suffered from seizures, had a neurologist, and took Nayzilam, a seizure medication.
At no point during the encounter did any of the officers appear to entertain any explanation other than drugs for Janowski’s peculiar behavior, which included falling to the ground in their presence.
Sgt. Bowers, the ranking officer on scene, asked Janowski only whether the seizure medication made her loopy.
“She’s here, there, and everywhere, dude,” Sgt. Bowers said in the video.
The incident report stated that Ramirez informed Janowski that she was under arrest when he handcuffed her, but bodycam video and audio provide no record of him doing so. The report also claimed that without being questioned, Janowski stated she believed she was having a seizure.
Despite Janowski’s consistent denial of drug use, body camera video records the officers joking among themselves.
“I think she’s meth-ed out,” said Sgt. Bowers.
“On a bender too,” said Officer Yowell.
Eventually, Janowski was charged with consuming or inhaling intoxicants in a public space despite a lack of any drug paraphernalia in her possession.
Janowski recalled harrowing details of her night in jail; she had no criminal or drug use history and described the incident as her first encounter with law enforcement.
She said she was mocked by jail personnel for requesting medical attention. Denied a pillow, she had to use a bag of soap for a headrest. It took hours for her family to learn she had been arrested, Janowski said, and she was permitted to take only a portion of the prescribed medication her family brought to the jail.
Another detainee named Cora, Janowski recalled, took care of her because she had a son who had seizures.
Janowski was released the following day.
Blood Streaming Down His Face
Hannah Whitten was a young girl when she learned of waking seizures. One day, returning home from school, she heard her brother jumping on his bed as she walked past his bedroom door to her room; he was talking, laughing and making a banging noise.
“It took me about two minutes to realize he was having a seizure,” Hannah Whitten said.
She returned to his room. The banging was Cheatwood hitting his head on the ceiling; when he turned to face her, Whitten saw blood streaming down her brother’s face.
Fifteen years later, Cheatwood died suddenly in his living room; the underlying causes of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy are not understood.
In her initial shock at her brother’s passing, Whitten was struck by the fact that her family had known nothing of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, even though her brother had suffered seizures since the age of 2. Soon enough, she would learn that Cheatwood had been a top candidate for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy.
“I do believe that if we had known about SUDEP, Dylan would be alive today,” Whitten said.
Whitten’s grief turned to anger; anger turned to action. In addition to sitting on the boards of Oklahoma epilepsy organizations, Whitten became a trustee of the Chicago-based Partners Against Mortality in Epilepsy.
Whitten expressed frustration that, despite the progress that has been made, epilepsy continues to struggle for recognition and funding.
Materials Sent to 20,000 Agencies
Financial resources may not be a panacea for increasing awareness about a highly stigmatized condition that, while not a mental health issue, fits squarely into the category of behavioral crisis provided for by recent federal and state law.
An Epilepsy Foundation report, produced at the time of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, offered a clear link between epilepsy and wrongful arrests.
“Persons who have epilepsy, and a variety of other disabilities, are frequently inappropriately arrested and jailed because police officers have not received proper training in the recognition of and aid for seizures,” the report said. “Often, after being arrested, they are deprived of medications while in jail, resulting in further seizures. Such discriminatory treatment based on disability can be avoided by proper training.”
At that time, training materials were provided without cost to 20,000 law enforcement agencies across the country; in 1990, the Bureau of Justice Statisticscounted 12,288 local police departments nationwide.
Despite an increase in resources, many police still lack the training necessary to better differentiate among crises such as an epileptic episode or other medical or mental health crisis.
Symptoms of epilepsy are frequently misinterpreted by police as symptoms of mental illness or drug use, but recent state and federal laws have attempted to bridge that gap to target crisis response and prioritize medical evaluations that could identify pre-existing health conditions and disabilities, equipping officers to better aid the communities they serve.
In 2016, the passage of Oklahoma State Questions 780 and 781 reduced incarcerations with the goal of using the resulting savings to bolster counties’ efforts to target crisis response and specifically address mental health and substance abuse problems, while also preparing officers to better identify medical emergencies.
Implementation took years, and an August report from Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform advised how the savings should be used.
“We should expand and strengthen Oklahoma’s behavior crisis system, which can serve as a first line of defense to keep people from becoming involved with the criminal legal system,” the report said.
The report revealed that only 44 of the state’s 77 counties had applied for and received the readily available funding. Those that have not applied for resources included many rural counties, said OCJR Policy Counsel Michael Olson.
Rural departments report that fewer resources and less manpower make it harder to receive training, while officers are required to respond to a broader range of situations.
“There Needs to be Better Training”
State law requires all correctional facilities to conduct a medical evaluation before booking, but county jails do not adhere to the same standards.
The Oklahoma County jail only recently changed its intake process to include complete medical evaluations in 2023 after multiple deaths and failed health inspections.
The change came after a federal probe investigating whether the state and Oklahoma City discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities. It required jail personnel to include more details of any drug- or health-related circumstances in each arrest, and prioritize identification of pre-existing health conditions and disabilities.
“People don’t understand how many different kinds of seizures there are,” Whitten said.
Janowski began to experience seizures approximately six years ago. After receiving a diagnosis, she moved from Texas to Oklahoma in 2022, to live with her boyfriend’s family.
Formerly an Uber driver, the diagnosis required Janowski to relinquish her driver’s license.
A month after her arrest and still facing charges, Janowski said Associate District Judge A. Clark Jett suggested a private conference with Assistant District Attorney Zachary Simmons.
At that meeting, Janowski described Simmons as sympathizing with her because he’d had a girlfriend who suffered from seizures; nevertheless, Janowski said, Simmons told her that meth was far more common in Texas County than epilepsy, so that’s what police were going to respond to.
Janowski said that it felt like Simmons was trying to talk her out of pursuing legal action over her arrest. She didn’t back down.
“There needs to be better training,” Janowski told the ADA.
She said he responded by saying that would require more taxes, or the state providing more money.
Free training for law enforcement is readily available from the Epilepsy Foundation.
Simmons and Guymon Police Chief Dale Hampsten did not respond to requests for interviews. All charges against Janowski were eventually dropped.
An Ongoing Lack of Awareness
Council on Law Enforcement and Education in Training Public Information Manager Andrew Hill said that some Oklahoma basic police training courses include epilepsy fundamentals, but if officers wish to pursue more in-depth training, they must do so outside of CLEET.
Such courses would not count toward continuing education credit, Hill said; he refused to elaborate on whether officers are rewarded in any way for obtaining additional expertise.
“CLEET is unable to comment on whether departments incentivize participation in these trainings, as those decisions are made by those agencies,” Hill said.
As to what happened in Texas County, Whitten advised common sense.
“I think where our police officers and those working for our state in crisis intervention need to be really careful is, especially if someone is telling you, I’m having a seizure, is to take them at face value and take them to urgent medical resources,” Whitten said.
Editor’s Note: After Oklahoma Watch published an exposé about a multi-million-dollar DA-run ticketing scheme in Texas County, we were flooded with tips from the panhandle. This story is the fifth in a series derived from those tips. The fourth story can be found here.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
