Former boot camp guard: We tried to help teen

REBECCA CATALANELLO

St. Petersburg Times

December 30, 2006

A former juvenile boot camp guard charged in the videotaped beating and death of a 14-year-old boy says he tried to help the teen when he realized something was wrong.

"I feel terrible," said Charles Helms Jr. in an online interview with ABC's 20/20, a version of which aired Friday night. "It's a devastating thing. I can only imagine what it would feel like to lose one of my children, one of my sons."

Martin Lee Anderson died Jan. 6, a day after seven guards - Helms among them - punched and kneed him when he refused to complete a required running drill at a Panama City boot camp.

An eighth person, a nurse, stood by and watched. All eight are charged with aggravated manslaughter on a child and are scheduled to go to trial next year.

"We were trying to see if the kid was faking it, feigning illness," Helms told ABC reporter Jim Avila in his first public interview since the incident.

Anderson was sent to the boot camp after violating probation by taking his grandmother's car on a joy ride.

Helms said that when Anderson collapsed on a dirt track after a forced 11/2-mile run, guards thought he might be faking to get out of the exercise, "which happens often with a new kid coming into the program," he said.

"He said something to the effect that 'I'm not going to do this' or 'I'll do this tomorrow,' " Helms said in the televised interview.

Punching Anderson in the arms to unclench his fists and kneeing him in the thighs was considered by the guards to be standard law enforcement procedure, Avila said during the news segment.

"What we did was not enough to kill a child," Helms said. "Not enough to harm a child."

But in an Associated Press story about the 20/20 interview, Helms is quoted more extensively than he was on television, saying he rushed to try to help Anderson when he realized something was wrong.

Helms said he saw a grain of sand touch Anderson's eye and noticed that the boy didn't blink, according to the AP. "That's an irritant in your eye, and he was not trying to wipe it out of his eye ... I knew he was not faking it, and I said, 'That's it. Call 911,' " Helms said.

"We did not disregard the fact that he was in trouble as soon as it was recognized. We changed hats and went to a rescue mode."

In the past, Helms' attorney, Waylon Graham, has placed much of the blame for Martin Lee Anderson's death on boot camp nurse Kristin Schmidt.

Graham said Schmidt told guards the teen was faking his illness, even as they covered his mouth, forcing him to breath ammonia, he said. The guards waited to call 911 at the nurse's advice, he said.

Helms, 50, a father of three, previously served in the Army, working as a drill sergeant. Helms lost his guard job after the boot camp tape surfaced.

A Bay County medical examiner first said the teen died from natural causes of complications from sickle cell trait. But after a tremendous public outcry, the Hillsborough County medical examiner conducted a second autopsy and ruled that Anderson died from suffocation because his mouth was forced closed as ammonia tablets were shoved into his nose.

Besides Helms and Schmidt, the other defendants are former guards Henry Dickens, Charles Enfinger, Patrick Garrett, Raymond Hauck, Henry McFadden Jr. and Joseph Walsh II.

They could each get up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

If it hadn't been for the video, Helms told 20/20, he doesn't think he would be facing charges at all.