NC inmate held down by deputies had brain damage when brought to hospital, lawsuit says
A Forsyth County sheriff’s captain handed paramedics a note as they wheeled an unresponsive John Elliot Neville out of the county jail after deputies had held him against the floor while he was having a medical emergency.
“Call if and when there is a time of death and if an autopsy is performed,” Captain C. Warren wrote on sheriff’s office stationary. “We need to know yes or no. Thank you.”
The note is detailed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Sean Neville, whose father died Dec. 4, 2019, two days after being taken from the jail to a Winston-Salem hospital.
“The callousness of this note demonstrates that correctional defendants were more concerned with the potential fallout from their treatment of Mr. Neville, than they were for Mr. Neville’s wellbeing,” attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also details the seriousness of Neville’s condition as he left the jail and that if he wasn’t completely brain dead, he was close to it.
The 56-year-old Black man had fought for his life for two hours and 37 minutes at the jail while suffering from a medical emergency.
But medical examiners said it was not his own health problems that killed him, but the way he was held down at the jail during the emergency.
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill charged five deputies and a nurse with involuntary manslaughter as a result.
Sean Neville said in a written statement to The News & Observer that he is grateful to O’Neill for showing patience and keen attention to his family. He also extended sympathy to those charged in his father’s death for what they’re going through now.
However, the family is suing the six people who have been charged as well as Forsyth County, the county’s Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough and Wellpath, the medical company that served the jail when Neville died.
“My statement is the same as it has been from the beginning,” Kimbrough said in a written statement to The N&O. “I support the Neville family as they grieve the loss of their dad. I understand this is a civil process, and I cannot discuss details, but I continue to stand on what is legal, what is moral, and what is right.
“Let it be known, I still love the Neville family.”
Wellpath’s spokeswoman Judy Lilley said it is company policy to decline comment on pending litigation.
Stuart Brooks, attorney for Cpl. Edward J. Roussel, one of the deputies named in the lawsuit, said, “The Neville family is first and foremost in our prayer, but he respectfully and eagerly awaits his day in court.”
Neville’s death became public at the same time that people around the country held protests seeking justice in the death of George Floyd, who was held down in Minneapolis in the same position as Neville, but had an officer kneel on his neck for around nine minutes during his own arrest.
“Never during the national protests and violence surrounding George Floyd’s murder did we seek to inflame an already tense situation or foment unrest,” Sean Neville said. “Peace, justice and grace have been and will continue to be my family’s guiding principles.”
Sean Neville said his family wanted to seek justice for their father away from the public spotlight but realized they can’t.
“In keeping with our previous stance, we had hoped to quietly and privately resolve our differences with Forsyth County, the Sheriff’s office and Wellpath,” Sean Neville wrote. “They have made that impossible and so now we have hired the lawyers at Kilpatrick Townsend to help us seek the fair and just outcome which none of us children nor our father John have yet received.”
“From our standpoint and the family’s standpoint, the defendants have not been cooperative in attempting to bring this to a successful resolution,” said Rich Keshian, the attorney representing Sean Neville on the lawsuit.
“...Mr. Neville died a slow, painful, terrifying, preventable, and totally unnecessary death while in the custody of the Detention Center and totally unable to fend for himself,” the Kilpatrick Townsend law firm wrote repeatedly in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
The lawsuit provides the public with further details on what jail officials knew about Neville’s health, what happened once deputies stopped restraining him and what policies were in place at the jail to prevent someone from dying the way Neville did.
Neville’s arrest
Kernersville police officers brought Neville to the Forsyth County jail, where he was booked at 3:25 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2019.
The lawsuit says that Neville came in calm and talkative.
There had been an active warrant for Neville’s arrest when Kernersville Police spotted him that morning.
The warrant was taken out by a Guilford County magistrate after a woman reported he assaulted her.
During Neville’s booking, he told deputies he used an inhaler for his asthma, he had a sleep disorder and various food allergies, court records state.
The lawsuit states that deputies took control of Neville’s inhaler and that he last used it at 10:35 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2019.
In the cell
Attorneys learned from Neville’s cellmate that he ate and drank normally throughout that day.
The lawsuit goes on to say that Neville took several naps, and that his cellmate heard him snore and at times heard what sounded like Neville trying to catch his breath.
But he said he never heard Neville complain about feeling sick or talk about health problems, court records say.
It wasn’t until the middle of the night that the cellmate realized something was wrong with Neville.
He woke to the sound of Neville falling four feet to the concrete floor from his top bunk. The cellmate looked over and saw Neville shaking violently, like he was having a seizure.
The cellmate hit a panic button to call jail staff for help.
Detention staff responded and took Neville’s cellmate from their shared space.
They also called for the Special Response Team, which the lawsuit states is “trained and exists for the purpose of quelling unrest or to address disciplinary problems in the jail.”
At 3:26 a.m. on Dec. 2, 2019, the SRT, made up of Roussel, Detention Officers Sarah E. Poole, Antonio M. Woodley and Christopher Stamper, and Sgt. Lavette M. Williams, arrived at Neville’s cell.
They found he had thrown up, had blood around his mouth, was sweating, had glazed eyes and looked as if he was seizing.
The lawsuit then details what police body camera footage, released by a judge to reporters, showed.
Neville didn’t respond when they tried to speak with him, so Wellpath nurse Michelle Heughins used her closed fist to rub her knuckles up and down his chest to try and revive him.
It did just that, but Neville awoke confused, incoherent and uncooperative, the lawsuit said.
Court records say that Heughins reported that Neville had labored breathing the entire time and lost consciousness again.
When he regained consciousness, he remained confused and tried to break free from the SRT’s control.
For the first time, the team placed him on his stomach with his arms secured behind his back, a position known as prone restraint.
“I can’t breathe,” he said once.
Deputies brought over a wheelchair and decided to take Neville to another floor in the jail.
The lawsuit states that one of the facility’s health guidelines ‘strongly encourages’ that if restraints are used they be used on a bed designed to accept therapeutic restraints rather than on a chair.
The policy also states that if restraints are used for security reasons, the health care staff must be notified to review an inmate’s medical chart for any possible conditions that could be hindered.
That didn’t happen, according to the lawsuit.
Asking for help
Before Neville was moved into the new cell, he asked for his cylinder, which attorneys said is what he called his inhaler.
Nobody got it for him, the lawsuit states.
Once inside the cell, Neville was again placed on his stomach with his wrists still secured behind his back. What the public can’t see in the video but the lawsuit states is that deputies also raised his legs to his wrists, essentially putting him in a “hogtied” position.
Again, he told deputies he couldn’t breathe.
Deputies tried to remove the handcuffs from his wrists but the key broke inside the lock.
The lawsuit states that the key breaking could have been prevented had they taken him into the infirmary instead of crowding into a small cell.
He continued to tell deputies around 30 times that he couldn’t breathe, while they waited for a bolt cutter to clip him out of the metal restraints.
“You’re breathing, because you’re talking, you’re yelling, you’re moving,” Roussel shouted at Neville.
It took four minutes before deputies straightened Neville’s legs at Williams’ request to help Neville breathe, the lawsuit says.
After 12 minutes in prone restraint, deputies cut the handcuffs from Neville’s arms.
Heughins checked Neville and then left the room with the deputies.
Outside the cell she told them that she couldn’t see him breathing.
Revival
The deputies and Heughins reentered the cell, and she could not find his pulse.
She began chest compressions, and 19 minutes after he was placed in prone restraint, a CPR mask was put on his mouth.
The judge would not sign off on any more of the video being released, but the lawsuit describes what happened to Neville afterward.
CPR didn’t work, so the SRT brought an automated external defibrillator, but when placed on his chest, the machine told the team a shock wasn’t advised.
The Forsyth County Fire Department and EMS arrived at the jail and began CPR and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support.
About 10 to 15 minutes later, at 4:35 a.m., Neville’s pulse and blood pressure returned.
For the first time since Neville fell out of his bunk, more than an hour earlier, deputies let him go unrestrained and he was taken to the hospital, according to the lawsuit.
At the hospital
At 5:02 a.m. Neville arrived at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist unconscious and with a blood pressure of 220/200.
But then both his heart rate and blood pressure dropped and his pulse stopped.
For six minutes, doctors attempted CPR on Neville and gave him epinephrine and sodium bicarbonate. After six minutes his pulse returned.
But then he flatlined again.
Another three minutes went by before they revived him.
Scans of Neville’s brain showed he was at the least in a deep coma with little chance of survival. The scans showed he had severe brain damage from lack of oxygen, the lawsuit states.
Neville’s condition continued to deteriorate and he began showing signs of multisystem organ failure, the lawsuit says
A chest X-ray showed his lungs may have partially collapsed, court records said.
Neville died two days later.
A pathologist found that the only thing in Neville’s system was his allergy medicine, according to the lawsuit.
Jail’s medical plan
The lawsuit states that the Forsyth County jail has a medical plan that requires training of all correctional staff to recognize the need for medical care, intervention in life-threatening situations and when acute chronic conditions like asthma or seizures are present.
The policy, according to the lawsuit, requires the availability of around-the-clock medical care and that if someone’s “life or limbs” are threatened that they are taken to the hospital quickly.
Under the jail’s medical plan, Neville would have been classified as special needs because of his asthma.
The plan also recommends that inmates with “true asthma” have access to rescue inhalers so a situation doesn’t become life-threatening.
The lawsuit criticizes the deputies and Heughins for failing to let Neville have an inhaler or bring it to him when he got sick and for waiting more than two hours to take Neville to the hospital.
“Unfortunately, in spite of the Plan, nobody thought to provide Mr. Neville with an inhaler even though his breathing was labored or to call for emergency medical help sooner,” the lawsuit states. “Nor did anyone recognize the extreme danger posed by placing a special needs patient who was in distress in a prone position that compromises respiration and cardiac functions.”
In January, Heughins agreed for her nursing license to be suspended and that she would not practice in North Carolina, pending the outcome of her criminal case, according to the lawsuit.
The N&O contacted her attorney, Ripley Rand, for comment by phone and email Tuesday afternoon but he could not immediately be reached.
Wellpath has served as the medical provider at the Forsyth County jail since 2009 and between 2012 and 2017, had been sued four times by inmates there.
The lawsuit states that county commissioners selected the company, and the sheriff supported the choice, because of its low cost despite concerns from the public about wrongful deaths and mismanaged care.
Overall, the company has been sued 2,297 times in federal court and its founder has been federally charged with bribing a sheriff.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREThis is a breaking news story
In a breaking news situation, facts may be unclear and details may change as the story develops. Our reporters are working to get information as quickly and accurately as possible. This story may be updated as more information becomes available. Refresh this page for the most up-to-date report.
This story was originally published September 28, 2021 at 1:49 PM with the headline "NC inmate held down by deputies had brain damage when brought to hospital, lawsuit says."
