Family gathers to honor man who died in Sacramento jail in 2024, and 12 others who’ve died there since
Family and friends of a man who died while in the Sacramento County Main Jail in 2024 gathered Thursday to raise questions about his death as well as the deaths of a dozen inmates since then.
Asaiah Gerome Washington, 40, had been at the jail about a month in July 2024 when he and his cellmate were found unresponsive in their cell. The cellmate was revived, but Washington was pronounced dead at the jail. The coroner’s office later determined the cause of death was fentanyl and methamphetamine intoxication.
Washington’s wife, Toni Washington, criticized jail employees for not searching inmates more thoroughly for drugs, and for placing Asaiah in a cell with an inmate who had been caught smuggling drugs into the jail before.
“Accountability should never depend on incarceration status,” Toni Washington said, standing outside the jail Thursday during a news conference to raise awareness about carceral deaths. “He mattered. He was not a statistic. He was not disposable. He was a father figure, a worker, a loved one.”
Washington’s daughter, Jadah Washington, 20, said her father had struggled with mental illness after he suffered an injury working as an arborist.
“We are here because my dad mattered,” she said at the event, which was held on what would have been her father’s birthday. “We are here because transparency matters.”
The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the county in federal court. The suit alleges Washington got the drugs from his cellmate, who had recently been sent to the hospital for drug removal from the rectum area, but when he was sent back to the jail, some drugs were still inside him, and he used some of those with Asaiah, prior to them both being found unconscious.
“We do fault the jail for putting them together in the first place and not searching and removing the drugs from (the cellmate),” said Mark Merin, the Washington family’s attorney. “It’s shocking that they were incapable or refused to effectively intersect the flow of drugs into the facility.”
Sacramento Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sgt. Edward Igoe did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
Overdose deaths have been an ongoing issue at the jail, which has been under a federal Consent Decree since a 2019 class action lawsuit alleged medical and mental health mistreatment.
In 2025 and so far in 2026, Sacramento County has paid at least $2.45 million in settlements to the family members of four men who died while incarcerated at the downtown jail, according to records obtained by The Sacramento Bee.
In 2023, a then-medical assistant working for Avid Healthcare Services was charged with smuggling meth into the jail. Since then, the county no longer contracts with Avid, and instead uses county employees to provide medical care at the jail. The jail, which is run by the county Sheriff’s Department, has also since increased withdrawal monitoring, as well as hired a new county medical director, Dr. Thomas Bzoskie, restructured nursing director positions, and added naloxone administration to the standard pill-call process, County Spokesperson Elizabeth Zelidon has said.
However the jail deaths have continued.
So far this year three inmates have died, including one in which the cause of death was drug related, according to coroner’s reports. Last year at least six inmates died, including four of drug-related causes.
Activists with Decarcerate Sacramento, an organization that organized Thursday’s news conference, said they want to raise awareness about jail deaths to implore the Board of Supervisors to enact further changes to prevent more deaths.
“Today we honor them not only with grief, but with action,” said Chris Christopher-Camilo Carbajal-Carbajal, an activist with the organization. “We see you, we stand with you, and we carry your loved ones here.”
Volunteers and the Washington family played a recording of Asaiah Washington doing a poetry reading, had a moment of silence, and also read off the more than 50 names of Sacramento jail inmates who have died since 2018.
