Category: City Jails|County Jails|Custodial Death|Medical Care

At 11:35 AM on January 23, 2023, Tobe Lee Fluty, Jr. went unconscious at Randall County Jail in Amarillo, Texas. Lifesaving measures finally started, and he was loaded on the ambulance’s gurney and transported to North West Texas Hospital. CPR was provided and he regained a heartbeat either en route to the hospital or upon arrival at the hospital. He was listed in critical condition. Soon after, they were notified that he had been declared deceased. The date and time of death were January 24, 2023, at 8:08 AM. The manner of death was listed as complications of peritonitis.

Jail Inmate Dies From Peritonitis

There are many stories of inmates dying from peritonitis. The death of a woman carries that headline. The woman was found dead from a ruptured ulcer. She was unconscious and they were unsuccessful in reviving her.   

Sister identified 8^th inmate to die at a particular jail. She had been told that her sister had suffered from acute peritonitis, an often painful inflammation of the silk-like membrane that lines the abdominal wall and organs. Her sister was the eighth person to die at that jail.

Early treatment was essential for the man’s survival. A man went behind bars for 16 days to pay approximately $400 dollars in court fines. Shortly after being booked, he suffered acute peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the abdominal lining for which early treatment is essential.

Learn more in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this series.

Helping inmates jailed in local Texas jurisdictions is the purpose of this site. Making accusations that persons or entities have participated in wrongdoing is never intended.

–Guest Contributor

This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that it is going to examine the recent deaths at the jail. A spokesperson announced that federal rights violations are being investigated, but the details of the ongoing process will not be publicly shared.

An Inmate’s Cause of Death is Blunt Force Injury to the Head

A 23-year-old who died at the jail in 2021 was incarcerated there for a week when detention officers who were distributing lunch found him unresponsive and lying face down in his cell. The officers immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and the medical staff was called. Medical personnel continued lifesaving measures and transported the inmate to the jail clinic. The local fire department was called, after which paramedics arrived and assumed care. The inmate was transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.

After an autopsy was completed, the custodial death report was amended to show that the manner of death was a homicide, which includes justifiable homicide. The medical cause of death is listed as “Blunt force injuries of the head with subdural hematoma.”

The sheriff’s department reported that 70-plus interviews were conducted regarding the death. In addition, all of the approximately 1,500 cameras within the jail were checked and whatever confrontation resulted in the custodial death was not captured on video.

Learn more in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and this ongoing series.

Out of a desire to provide helpful resources to Texas municipal and county jail inmates, this website was created. There is never an intention of insinuating that anyone or any organization has been a participant in wrongdoing.

–Guest Contributor

On November 2, 2022, the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office in Seguin, Texas, filed a custodial death report (CDR) about the October 10, 2022, death of 44-year-old Chad Lenoch. Sheriff Arnold Zwicke is listed as the Director. The CDR shows that Mr. Lenoch entered the jail on October 4, 2022.

El Paso County Jail Inmate Andres Linares Baca Dies of Apparent Suicide

Andres Linares Baca was booked into the El Paso County Jail at 601 E. Overland in El Paso, TX 79901 on May 10, 2022. A CDR about his custodial death was filed by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office on July 26, 2022, a date which exceeded the 30-day limit for filing reports of inmate deaths with the Office of Attorney General in Texas.

When Mr. Baca went through intake at the jail, the jailer who processed him indicated that he did not make any suicidal statements. He was placed in a single-occupancy cell. At about 2:52 PM on May 29, 2022, Mr. Baca was discovered hanging in his cell. He was transported to a local hospital, where he was declared deceased at 3:26 PM. The manner of death is listed as suicide and the medical cause is “hanging.”

Learn more in Part 1 and this continuing series.

This website and all posts are provided as informational resources for inmates who are now or have previously been detained in Texas municipal or county jails. This site never intends to make accusations or insinuations suggesting that people or entities have engaged in misdeeds.

–Guest Contributor

Continuing from Part 3, doctors attempted to take an MRI, but they said the 47-year-old woman was too restless to remain still. She could not walk and she lost any awareness of who she was or where she was. Two days after being admitted into the hospital, the woman died in her hospital bed. The hospital said that the cause of death was both high blood pressure and a kind of fungal meningitis most commonly suffered by people with HIV/AIDS.

The woman’s husband has said that in the videos from the jail, he cannot even recognize his wife. The deceased inmate’s mother has stated that she cannot bear watching them because of the level of suffering her child was going through.

The family has formally complained that the woman was deprived of medical care and that she was housed in inhumane conditions.

An investigative journalist looked into the issue of this inmate’s tragic death not being listed as a custodial death. As mentioned previously, the Texas county jail had released her from custody when they had her admitted into the hospital about two days before her death. Not only is this action a strategy jails have been using to escape scrutiny for deaths of inmates, but the procedures they followed were far from typical.

For a valid release from incarceration, a District Attorney usually drops an inmate’s charges or the inmate signs a written agreement called a personal recognizance (PR) bond. In this case, the release papers reflect that the Sheriff released the inmate and indicated she was not capable of signing anything. After the inmate was in the hospital, someone from the jail requested that the woman’s sister sign the release. However, the jail did not have possession of the sister’s legal power of attorney. The point has been made that, without signing a PR bond, how could the release be valid?

See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this continuing series to learn more.

This website purposes to help Texas prisoners currently or formerly detained in city and county jails and their families. There is never an intention on this site to infer misdeeds on the part of a person, organization, or institution.

–Guest Contributor

To continue with details that preceded the 47-year-old inmate’s custodial death, she spent her final night at the jail on the concrete floor, where she used her mat as a blanket. She also tugged her T-shirt over her knees. The face-to-face observations did not occur every 30 minutes, as required. Video records show that some jailers looked through the window to her cell but then walked away. On one occasion, a nurse checked her vitals. Jailers called emergency services 10 hours later.

The following occurred at the hospital:

• The physician at the hospital placed the inmate on a feeding tube and hooked her up to receive IV fluids.
• Among the doctor’s findings was that the woman’s optic nerve was swollen, which is evidence that pressure was likely building up in her skull.
• Her pupils were dilated and did not respond to light.
• Inside her left eye, the fluids were hazy, and she stated that she could not see.
• The physician attempted to flex the woman’s neck, but it was too stiff to move.
• As for her heartbeat, he reported that it was beating as though she had been running a marathon.
• She was unable to grip anything with her hands, such as a cup of water.

See Part 1, Part 2, and this continuing series to learn more.

This site seeks to assist Texas inmates and their families. There is no intent on this website to imply that wrongs have occurred on the part of an individual or institution.

–Guest Contributor

There is video evidence that partially tells the story of the death of the 47-year-old inmate in a Texas county jail mentioned in the first part of this series. Documentation also helps piece together what happened to her after being incarcerated. The following tracks her health and her experience in a Texas jail:

• When booked into the jail, her vital signs were normal; and approximately two months later, she was dead.
• A video recording from the jail shows the inmate four days before being taken to a hospital. She is lying on her side with her head in her hands. A jailer asked her if she wanted to be seen by a physician. After a response that was barely audible, the jailer wrote words she did not speak. What the jailer wrote was that she did not wish to see a doctor. What she whispered, however, was “They don’t never do nothing.”
• Two days later, the inmate was on a mat and was dragged along the floor by a jail guard into a medical observation cell where all she had was the mat on a concrete floor.
• Video records show that the woman crawled around the space with white brick walls and knocked on the windows and door.
• Over the two days in the medical observation cell, she ate only a few bites of food. After struggling to lift a carton of food, the food spilled onto her mat. She lay there with her head in the spilled food.
• She drank only three small cups of water during those two days.

See Part 1 and this continuing series to learn more.

This site seeks to assist Texas inmates and their families. There is no intent on this website to imply that wrongs have occurred on the part of an individual or institution.

–Guest Contributor

The custodial death mentioned in Part 1 of this series was one of two that occurred in a two-month period that two experienced nurses and a physician considered preventable, as determined by a review of emails and internal jail memos about the care of those inmates. The three medical professionals reported what they believed to the local Sheriff and also accused the health care agency of making profit a greater priority than saving lives.

The three individuals were all fired for speaking out against their employer.

In that city, a story of fatal medical neglect was assembled through confidential monitor reports, unreported testimony of whistleblowers, thousands of police and court documents, and interviews with about twelve former jail staff and medical personnel.

Some of the misconduct that the same healthcare contractor was found to allegedly be associated with included the following:

• Prescription drugs routinely went missing.
• Mentally ill inmates did not receive treatment and their records were falsified.
• Gravely ill patients were denied hospitalization.
• No doctor was on-site for weeks at a time, and care was left to nurses and video calls with physicians.
• A single psychiatrist was given the responsibility of providing psychiatric treatment to all 400 of the inmates at the jail deemed mentally ill. This constituted one-quarter of the jail’s entire population.

Although the healthcare contractor claims that patient care was the priority and that staff members were told to hospitalize inmates as needed, records tell a different story. For example, a doctor made a request for an inmate with a treatable heart condition to be hospitalized, but that request was denied. The inmate died. An inmate who had not received her prescription medications attacked and crippled a guard. Within 32 hours of crawling across a floor to beg for medical care at a hospital, an inmate died as a result of a blood clot in his leg.

Learn more about this story in Part 1 and this ongoing series.

This post, like all posts on this site, is an informational resource. There is no intent to imply that any institution, organization, or individual has engaged in misconduct of any kind.

–Guest Contributor