Waiting For Teddy Mother Prays For Recovery Of Boy Beaten With Brick

More than a week ago Kathy Barnum was trying to find her son, wishing he would come home.

He had gone out on a Friday night and not returned.

“I kept calling and calling trying to find him,” Barnum said.

But 17-year-old Theodore “Teddy” Stewart couldn’t call his mom and no one could call for him. He was in Sacred Heart Medical Center - unconscious, in critical condition and an unidentified “John Doe” to the police who found him bleeding and alone in a north Spokane street.

The lanky boy lying in the 1 a.m. darkness of West Sinto had no identification. He had massive head and facial injuries. He had been brutally beaten less than a mile from his home.

It wasn’t until Saturday night that Barnum found her son. She has been with him ever since. She spends hours and hours by his bed kissing the hand that she holds in hers. She talks to him, rubs his arm and prays.

“I touch his sweet face and hands and he don’t even know I’m there,” Barnum said on Tuesday.

Teddy has spent the last nine days in an intensive care unit. He’s still unconscious but his breaths trigger a ventilator that fill his lungs. There is a long journey of healing ahead of him and no one is certain what kind of person he’ll be at the end of it.

“I don’t care what they say, I don’t care how bad he is. I think he is gonna be all right,” Barnum said Tuesday.

But then Sunday night, she said a doctor had told her Teddy will never be the same. He will have an intense rehabilitation and then need to go to a nursing home.

“I told him no, he’s not going to a nursing home,” she said. “I don’t care if I have to spoon feed him.”

She wants her son to come home.

The night he was attacked, Teddy had been with a group of other young people at a house on the 2000 block of West Sinto. According to a police report, a young woman told 17-year-old Dale A. Simmons of Spokane to “get” Teddy for choking her.

At first Simmons went to the kitchen to get a knife to “‘kill’ the victim,” the police report reads.

Another boy took the knife from Simmons, but in a short while he found another weapon - a brick.

At some point the party went outside and Teddy was accused of calling another girl an obscenity. As he faced the very boy who had disarmed Simmons, Simmons came from the side and slammed a brick into the side of his head, police say.

By his own account, as written in the police report, Simmons punched Teddy and then kicked him the face and head “over and over again.”

Police have taken Simmons’ shoes as evidence. He’s been arrested and charged with first-degree assault. He will make a plea to the charge Thursday.

The story of that night has been confirmed by other witnesses. But no one knows Teddy’s account. They may never know.

“It sounded like a hell of a fight,” said Orville Best, who woke up and went out his door to see what was going on. He saw only a group of teenagers running down the street, but not the injured boy.

“Teddy could be a little brat, but he could never hurt anyone like this,” Barnum said.

He is a basketball player, an artist, likes cartoons and video games and has a huge appetite, his mother said.

“He has the love of God in his heart,” she said.

She has taken her son’s worn black Bible to his hospital room. It sits on a small table along with medals his father earned in the Vietnam War.

They are there waiting for him. Precious things, but not as precious as his mother’s love. She waits for her son. She wants him to come home.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo