More about the Wound on Mark’s Forehead

In my second conversation with my brother’s attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center, Dr. Edward Piotrowski informed me in early February 2005 that he had noticed soft-tissue swelling on Mark’s forehead when he arrived at the burn unit (on the earlier conversation in January 2004, see posts of December 31, 2021, and January 31, 2022).  My purpose in contacting Dr. Piotrowski at this point was to find out if Mark had been given atropine while at ECMC since a chemist who had examined my brother’s toxicology screen wondered why atropine appeared in that report.

Dr. Piotrowski stated that atropine had been administered as part of Mark’s treatment, to aid in the insertion of a breathing tube, and went on to reveal that he had seen soft-tissue swelling on Mark’s forehead, which he thought might have been caused by a blow to Mark’s head.  He therefore ordered a CT scan because he needed to know if there was any bleeding in Mark’s brain, which would affect his treatment.  The doctor explained that although the CT scan revealed no bleeding, the swelling was revealed to be of a deep nature rather than merely of the skin.

As discussed in a previous post (see September 30, 2020), Atty. Michael Kelly in September 2005 encouraged N.Y.S.P. Senior Investigator John Wolfe to obtain Mark’s medical records and check them for evidence of the wound on Mark’s forehead.  But after obtaining the medical records through a subpoena, Wolfe stated that he could find nothing in them about soft-tissue swelling on my brother’s forehead (or further damage to the left side of his face, which Dr. Piotrowski also mentioned) and added that the doctor’s handwriting was difficult to decipher.

Yet, as the earlier post points out, Wolfe did not interview Dr. Piotrowski himself to substantiate his information about the soft-tissue damage, nor did he have an N.Y.S.P. forensic scientist review the CT scan and other relevant materials in the medical records.  In addition, radiologists make a report on a CT scan that they interpret and send it on electronically to the physician.  There should have been such a report in Mark’s medical records.  Wolfe, then, had several ways of eliciting the information about the wound on Mark’s forehead.  So why did he simply dismiss the question of that wound?

A cynical remark Wolfe made about a comment by a firefighter on the scene of my brother’s truck fire seems especially ironic in the light of his failure to pursue Dr. Piotrowski’s concern about the soft-tissue damage to Mark’s forehead.  When I mentioned to him in October 2005 firefighter Wayne Frank’s regret that he and fellow firefighter Gary Wind had not gone down on their hands and knees to hear what Mark was trying to tell them because they could not understand him, Wolfe simply scoffed, “Oh, is that the guy with the nine-iron?”

In fact, firefighter Wayne Frank said to me in July 2005, “The police should have looked for Mark’s nine-iron.”  Soon after, he explained to Atty. Michael Kelly that he had seen the wound on Mark’s forehead and thought it looked as though my brother had been hit on the head by a nine-iron.   Although Wayne Frank arrived within a couple of minutes after Gary Wind, the first firefighter on the scene, the N.Y.S.P. investigators never bothered to interview him.  Wayne Frank’s comment by no means merits Wolfe’s scornful response.

My brother, who was an excellent golfer and planned to get back into the game, in fact kept his set of golf clubs in the garage attached to his house.  In her witness statement taken the night of Mark’s truck fire, his wife Susan states that about a half-hour before seeing his truck go up in flames in the field across from their house, she heard a noise in the garage, which she thought came from the cats.  She apparently never went to look.  But she goes on to say in her witness statement that she later “realized” that Mark had taken a 5-gallon plastic gas can out of the garage (see police report through a link on this blog; see also post of October 30, 2018).

Presumably, someone had gone into the garage and perhaps took more than a gas can.  A pool of blood found on the scene not far from the garage the night of the fire, which was proved conclusively to be Mark’s, should have suggested to the NYSP investigators that my brother might have been attacked by someone.

Although the lead investigator Edward Kalfas did not appear on the scene until Mark had already been taken away by the Medevac airlift, the first N.Y.S.P. officer on the scene, David Chandler, should at least have looked at Mark for possible injuries in addition to the burns.  Yet the police report is silent on the matter.  Clearly, no effort was made to look for any kind of instrument or weapon that might have inflicted an injury on my brother’s head or any other part of his body.