UC Davis to pay $600K settlement to family of man who died after Sacramento jail attack
The University of California is paying a $600,000 settlement to the family of a man who died after he was assaulted by his cellmate at the Sacramento County Main Jail.
Civil rights attorney Mark Merin filed the lawsuit in 2020 on behalf of Shelley Debbs, the mother of Bryan Debbs, who died in 2019. The lawsuit named two UC Davis Health nurses as defendants. UC Davis contracts with the county to provide psychiatric services at the jail.
Debbs, who had schizophrenia, had been accommodated at the jail during previous occasions of incarceration, including reclassification and changes of cell assignment, the lawsuit stated. But when Debbs was taken into custody in 2019, a UC Davis psychiatrist ordered Debbs to be housed on the psychiatric floor with cellmate Christian Ento, the lawsuit stated. Both were listed in jail records as “gravely disabled.”
Ento can be seen on the jail surveillance cameras strangling Debbs, then stabbing his eyes with a pencil at least 40 times, the lawsuit stated. The attack lasted 20 minutes, but the nurses failed to monitor the video screens to notice it, until seeing the attack during a routine cell check, the lawsuit alleged.
Debbs was transported to the hospital where he died about a month later. The coroner’s office determined the cause of death was “complications of neck compression,” the lawsuit stated.
The Sheriff’s Office did not announce the death, and it only became public after The Sacramento Bee reported it.
The lawsuit alleges that UC Davis fails to provide inmates with mental health and medical care, fails to appropriately assign inmates to cells who are suffering from mental illnesses, and fails to promptly transfer inmates to psychiatric hospitals when they are at risk of serious harm.
The lawsuit is still ongoing against the county and its Sheriff’s Office. Spokespeople for UC Davis and the county declined comment.
So far in 2023 there have been at least four inmate deaths. Keith Still, who was unhoused and had schizophrenia, died of end state renal disease, and cardiovascular disease in January, according to the coroner death report. Also in January, Joseph Wood died after choking on food. The causes of death for Delion Johnson, who died in April, and Michael Prince, who died Saturday, are still pending.
The jail is violating the so-called Mays Consent Decree, a 2019 settlement of a class action lawsuit involving jail conditions. A civil grand jury uncovered the violations in an investigation.
This story was originally published July 14, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
