Georgetown police face no legal consequences for leaving man who was in distress, later killed
Georgetown police officers who dropped off a cognitively impaired man at a McDonald’s before he was hit and killed by a car will face no legal repercussions after Kentucky’s highest courts declined to hear the case.
Keith G. Burns, 48, of London, was taken into custody in 2017 for erratic driving, but police later “abandoned” him at a local McDonald’s at night, “dressed in dark clothing” and with “no means of safe transport,” according to court documents.
Burns wandered off and was hit and killed by a van Oct. 3, 2017. His sister, Lisa Williams, filed a lawsuit in 2018 against the police department and claimed they were negligent when they released him despite knowing he was in mental distress.
The case had been appealed several times in recent years and rose through higher courts until the Kentucky Supreme Court declined last week to hear it, ending the lawsuit entirely.
Greg Belzley, Williams’ attorney, said the resolution demonstrated that courts insulate police from accountability.
“People need to know that they cannot count on the police,” Belzley told the Herald-Leader.
Police and county officials initially denied all the claims made by Williams and said official immunity — a legal doctrine that protects government officials, including law enforcement, from lawsuits while they’re undertaking official duties — barred them from being held liable.
Williams said her brother was the type who would do anything to help another person.
“To me, he would’ve done anything for me, and then I wanted to do this for him,” Lisa Williams said in an interview with the Herald-Leader. “It was all about him to me. It wasn’t nothing else.”
What happened in the case
Police were called to investigate reports that Burns was driving erratically, and when they pulled him over, he did not know where he was or how he got there.
Tommy Enricco, one of three officers who responded, observed a bleeding scab on Burns’ head that Burns said was from a hard fall earlier in the day. Burns also police he was recently released from a 10-day hospital stay for a neurological disorder.
Enricco and two other senior officers who arrived on the scene did not search Burns’ truck or administer a field sobriety test, according to court documents. Emergency medical services were called, and they tested Burns’ blood sugar after he made claims he was “possibly diabetic” and missed his medication. Burns refused to be transported by EMS.
Police ultimately dropped Burns off at a nearby McDonald’s with no way to contact his family or transportation. Williams said in her lawsuit that police had a statutory obligation to transport Burns to his home in London or take him to a hospital to be evaluated.
In 2017, a new state law required that police have guidelines for how to handle individuals with diminished mental capacity. That law has since changed and weakened the former safeguards.
Even if they didn’t transport Burns to a hospital, the officers also had an obligation to arrest Burns and seek charges of wanton endangerment or reckless driving, the lawsuit claims.
However, police stood by their decision to leave Burns and said that taking him to the hospital or transporting him home would have put a strain on local police resources.
When questioned about the decision to drop off a person with a mental health issue, former Georgetown Police Chief Mike Bosse said it was a “common occurrence.” Officers previously dropped a man with Alzheimer’s off at an interstate interchange, he said.
Bosse was fired in January 2023 after nearly 10 years in the position, when newly elected Mayor Burney Jenkins made personnel changes. Bosse now serves as the director of the Department of Criminal Justice Training Center in Richmond.
“We’re not going to have sufficient units to tie up at headquarters just to babysit somebody that’s sitting in the lobby,” Bosse said of the Burns incident in a deposition. “This guy is lucid enough, and he’s the same kind of citizen as any others, and he can go to the McDonald’s.”
Instead, senior officers called Burns’ brother-in-law, Les Williams, to pick up Burns. Williams arrived in Georgetown around 11 p.m., called police dispatch and was told that Burns had been “dropped off” at a McDonald’s.
Williams searched for his brother-in-law, and around midnight, he called dispatch, provided his phone number and asked them to call if Burns was found.
Williams was called a short time later by a female dispatcher who said to call a number because “they have your brother-in-law.”
Williams called the number only to discover that it was the coroner’s office.
“When I called that number and it was the coroner’s office — you can’t describe the feeling,” Les Williams told the Herald-Leader. “It was just a total shock.”
The lawsuit’s conclusion
Bill Fryer, a longtime Lexington Police officer and trainer at the Department of Criminal Justice Training in Richmond, presented expert testimony on behalf of Burns’ family.
“It is simply not credible to me...that any of the officers at the scene could conclude there was nothing wrong with Burns, that he posed no risk of harm to himself or others, and that he could be dropped off, unsupervised, at a private business location to await the arrival of someone, at some time, to take him home,” Fryer said in his analysis.
Fryer said what the officers chose to do was not a decision any responsible, competent or reasonable officer would make under the circumstances.
Initially, the state trial judge, Mike Dean, sided with the Williams, and was willing to send the case before a jury. Before they could do so, attorneys for the police department appealed the decision and sent it to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals said in their opinion that the Williams’ claims were devoid of showing any malicious intent against Burns. The Court of Appeals said Burns asked to be taken to the McDonald’s himself, and in order for police to take him against his will, Burns would have had to be under arrest.
“By dropping Burns off at McDonald’s, as he requested, the officers did not place Burns in a situation that caused his injuries after he was released from custody,” the opinion reads. “That (Burns) later decided to leave McDonald’s was not tied to any action of law enforcement.”
Without holding an oral argument to allow both sides to make their case, the court of appeals ruled in favor of police and said officers have discretion to decide whether they should take further action when responding to a mental health situation.
Belzley, in turn, appealed the higher court’s decision and requested that the case be heard by the Kentucky Supreme Court.
They declined to hear the case on March 26.
“It is all done,” Belzley said in an interview with the Herald-Leader. “There will be no accountability for what happened to Mr. Burns. The cops will regard this as a pat on the back and not as a warning or an indication for a need to change their practices about people with cognitive issues.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
