CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Princeton police officer and West Virginia State Police Academy basic-class student says he nearly died of a blood clot in his brain after being beaten by two of his instructors during a training session at the academy in Institute.

Christopher Winkler, 23, said the alleged beating at the hands of two trainers, which he said happened during baton training on April 5, left him unconscious.

His mother, Pamela McPeak, said an instructor told her that he saved her son's life by pulling two other instructors off Winkler when they continued to beat him while he was unconscious.

Maj. K.J. Foreman, chief of staff services for the State Police, confirmed that Winkler was injured during physical training and then taken to the hospital and spent three days there. Foreman said he didn't believe that Winkler continued to be struck once unconscious.

"I don't believe that's true.  . . . We certainly are not there to hurt anyone. This is a training facility. The last thing we want to do is injure anyone," Foreman said. "This is the first I've heard anyone saying he was mistreated or abused.

"We have not had any other reports or any other students saying they were abused. On the contrary, we've interviewed everyone we knew who saw what went on that day, and no one indicated anything of that nature to us."

According to McPeak, her son was singled out by several of the training officers.

Winkler was not cleared by his doctors to return to work on Friday and will be out at least for several more weeks.

"He's a good person with good morals, good values," McPeak said. "I don't know why they did this. We need an answer."

Instructors vs. student

Winkler said that, by April 5, the two black eyes an academy instructor allegedly had given him in an earlier training session were healed. It was a good thing, too: April 5 was the day the basic students took their class photo.

Winkler was in the academy's 141st Basic Police Training Class, which is for law enforcement officers other than the State Police. New law enforcement officers in departments throughout West Virginia must attend basic classes to get certified as a police officer in the state. The training lasts 16 weeks and differs from the State Police Cadet classes, which last for 30 weeks.

During that earlier training session, the basic students had to box each other in one-minute rounds as part of their training. Winkler says an instructor didn't think he was boxing another student hard enough and made Winkler box him.

Winkler said he received a concussion during the fight, in addition to two black eyes.

"He beat the hell out of me," Winkler said.

After the class photo on April 5, instructors started taking the students one by one for their baton training inside a gym converted from the old State Police helicopter hangar, Winkler said.

Inside the room, there were mats on the floor. Several of the instructors stood around in protective padding. The training was to simulate a situation where the student officers are attacked by multiple assailants at once. The instructors were to fight the cadets two-at-a-time. When one instructor got tired, there were others there to jump in, Winkler said.

The simulated fights were supposed to last three minutes.

Winkler said he was given a baton made out of foam rubber to use in the exercise. The trainers had no weapons but their fists, he said.

Winkler said he was asked if there was any physical condition they should know about before the exercise began.

He said he told them he had scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, and that striking him in the back of the head or neck could potentially paralyze him.

The instructors also had known about this prior to the training, Winkler said, because he had gone to routine chiropractic appointments during his time at the academy.

"I was supposed to strike them with the baton, and they were to go down on one knee," he said. "They never played by those rules. They never went down on one knee. That's what caused my injuries."

Winkler said that when the trainers came at him, they started punching him in the head until he was unconscious.

McPeak provided a hospital transfer form to the Sunday Gazette-Mail. The transfer is from Thomas Memorial Hospital to Cabell-Huntington Hospital. In it, attending physician Philip T. Berry wrote that Winkler had a subdural hematoma, or brain bruise, and that there was bleeding inside his brain.

Winkler said he was told at Cabell-Huntington that he had a blood clot in his brain. He said he was given medicine to dissolve the clot. Doctors said, if that didn't work, he would need surgery. Winkler had medical tests Friday, and he said doctors told him he still might need brain surgery.

'Keep this from happening'

Maj. Foreman said the State Police is investigating what happened during Winkler's training and is taking statements from everyone involved.

"We hate that this happened," Foreman said. "We have a large number of students over there, and we don't have any other injuries of this nature. We certainly don't abuse anyone."

Foreman said State Police leaders understand that something out of the ordinary happened and are reviewing it to see if anything could have changed the situation.

"We need to see if there is anything that could keep this from happening in the future," he said.

Foreman said none of the statements taken so far indicate that Winkler was struck after he was unconscious. Foreman said he wanted to know the name of the officer who told Pamela McPeak that had happened.

"I've talked to Mrs. McPeak personally," Foreman said, "and she had not mentioned that to me."

McPeak said the conversation with Foreman was short and that she didn't get a chance to tell him the name. With McPeak's consent, the name of that officer was provided by the Gazette-Mail to State Police spokesman Sgt. Michael Baylous.

"Those are some serious allegations, and we are looking into it very closely," said Matt Turner, a spokesman for Gov. Joe Manchin. "The governor will follow up on this, and we will make some inquiries.  . . .  Any time someone alleges something like this, there are concerns, but at the same time, the State Police [is] a very professional organization."

'The most horrible thing'

Winkler said students in his basic class knew that the baton training was coming, and that it was rough, from the beginning.

"That's what we were told from the other classes," Winkler said. "They told us what to expect."

The instructors downplayed the baton training, he said.

"They said they wanted to see a lot of aggression out of us," Winkler said. "I definitely had a lot of aggression until I was unconscious."

McPeak said she knew that was a big day for the students from talking to the mothers of others who had gone through the training.

"That was the last chance they [the instructors] had to rough them up," she said. "I knew Christopher was going to have to go through that. I could not go to work that day. I'd heard from other mothers this was the most horrible thing."

McPeak alleged that at least two basic students from the Princeton Police had gotten concussions from the training in the past.

"After that, [the training] gets easy," she said. "Usually, if they make it through that point, they make it through the class."

McPeak has some understanding of military-style training. She retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1996, after serving for 21 years, six of those on active duty.

McPeak said Winkler's fellow cadets liked her son, but that some of the instructors did not.

"He doesn't drink, do drugs, smoke, curse. He served as a Christian missionary for six months. That's how I see him; that's how most people see him," she said, when questioned why she believes her son was singled out. "He was not their alpha-male prototype. He was not the good ol' boy. He wasn't a part of their morals, their values."

Winkler said he believes the State Police trainers were rougher in general on the basic students, who are there to get certified for city and county departments, than they are on their own cadets.

"State Police cadets didn't get it nearly as bad, because they watch out for their own," Winkler said. "The city and county officers are nothing to them. We just get in the way."

'Something I always wanted to do'

When Winkler was 6, McPeak said, she had to buy him four pairs of blue pants and four blue shirts so he could dress like a police officer every day.

"That's what he thought a police officer wore," she said, "and that's all he would wear."

"It's just what I've always wanted to do," Winkler added.

McPeak said academy officials originally said Winkler could walk with his class in their graduation ceremony Friday, then later said he could not.

"Their policy is: If we physically attack you and injure you through our own gross negligence, then you can't graduate," alleged James McPeak, Winkler's step-father.

Foreman said Winkler would graduate after he finished the classes he missed because of the injury. He said he was not allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony because he hasn't graduated.

"If he is able to come back to the academy and take the classes he missed, he will receive his certification, and we want him to do that," Foreman said. "We want to see him succeed and be successful. This guy is on our team. He is a policeman, and we want people to become certified."

James McPeak served in the Army and the Reserve for a combined 36 years, including stints as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm. He said the family is concerned that academy officials won't let Winkler graduate even when he completes his classes because they have talked to the press.

"On the day he was going to graduate from the State Police Academy, he is going to Huntington to see a neurologist," James McPeak said. "I spent a lot of that [Army] time training people. What they do is not training. What they do is to satisfy their own sadistic urges and feed their own egos. There is no training benefit to kicking an unconscious cadet."

Pamela McPeak sent e-mails to multiple state officials, including Manchin.

Raamie Barker, chief of staff for West Virginia Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, D-Logan, said he responded to a message sent by Pamela McPeak to Tomblin's Facebook page.

Barker said he gave her some practical advice about dealing with such situations.

Barker said he wrote: "I advise that taking any action prior to his graduation or being activated might result in a negative outcome, undoing any gains made since you initially contacted me."

"I simply gave her some practical advice, that if you go out and file complaints, then these people just shut up," Barker said. "You don't do anything until you got all your ducks in a row."

Winkler is a semester away from completing his degree in forensics from Mountain State University. He believes he will complete his final classes in the fall.

Winkler said he just wants to finish his training and continue working as a Princeton police officer.

"The State Police cadets had gone through training two weeks before," Winkler said. "None of them left in an ambulance."

Reach Gary Harki at gha...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5163.