Nation IN BRIEF : WISCONSIN : Returning Boy to Dahmer Defended

A Milwaukee police officer suspended for returning a 14-year-old Laotian boy to alleged mutilation-killer Jeffrey L. Dahmer said he has agonized over how he might have prevented the boy’s death. On May 27, neighbors reported seeing a naked and bleeding boy run from Dahmer’s apartment building. Joseph T. Gabrish, 28, a patrolman for seven years, told the Milwaukee Journal that he and two fellow officers accepted Dahmer’s explanation the youth was his adult homosexual lover and that he was drunk. “We’re trained to be observant and spot things,” Gabrish said. “There was just nothing that stood out, or we would have seen it. . . . I run this thing through my mind, I wish there would have been. “ Dahmer, 31, said he strangled the boy soon after police left.