Paralyzed Veteran Dies on Cell Floor, Pleaded 5 Days for Help

This all started when Army veteran Elliott Williams, who was suffering from mental illness, was arrested at a hotel on Oct. 21, 2011. The front desk of the hotel phoned officers when Williams, who was accompanied with his parents at the time, started having a mental episode in the lobby. The alleged victimless crime was for misdemeanor obstruction. His sentence was death.

Daniel Smolen, the lawyer for Williams’s family said, “This guy went almost six days and never got taken to the hospital with a broken neck. They’re throwing food at him and making fun of him in the cell while he’s going through a horrific death. You wouldn’t do that to an animal or any living thing.” Some of the human rights atrocities the he endured while incarcerated were recorded on the jails surveillance cameras.

Smolen said, that this case is the worst civil rights violation that he’s witnessed on video. “It’s a slow torturous death, you’re cognizant of it the whole time. It’s like a nightmare.”

The Tulsa County sheriff’s office had no comment on the pending court cases. Sheriff Glanz’s attorney Corbin Brewster argued that, “Williams was surrounded by people in the jail who thought they were taking care of him.

Brewster wrote, “Despite medical staff’s incorrect diagnoses of Mr. Williams before his death, the undisputed evidence is that the medical professionals who examined and treated Mr. Williams sincerely believed he was faking paralysis.”  Brewster added, that the plaintiffs representation “has not established any evidence at anyone at the jail… consciously refused to provide him with medical care.”

Before Elliott was placed in the back of the squad car, he looked over at his father and told him that he loved him. This would be the last time they would see each other again.

The morning of Oct. 21, Earl and Katha Williams were together with their son when they say he became “somewhat argumentative” from the back seat of the car. That same afternoon, Williams checked into an Owasso hotel along with his wife, then later she phoned Earl. She claimed that she couldn’t wake him up and was scared. So his parents hurried to the hotel and knocked on their door that was opened by Williams.

Williams got ready and joined his family for afternoon church service. When the family arrived back at the hotel, Williams threw a paper bag in the lobby and headed back outside. A couple of cops showed up a few minutes later, Earl told them that his wife had recently left him and that he was severely sleep deprived. Williams’s marriage was on the rocks and he had been living with his dad since October of 2011. Earl explained while Williams was talking to the cops that he was discombobulated and not making any sense. The officers called in a mental health worker. The clear sign that there was something mentally wrong with him and should have been boldly documented on the arrest report.  As they waited, Williams became impatient and did not comply to the police who were telling him to sit down.

Officer Benjamin Wolery remembered that Williams “starting singing and talking to God,” stuck his hand in some grass and grabbed a handful of grass and dirt while saying “something religious and touched it to his tongue.” Worey added that he also said “Going to be a beat down tonight, all the way down there to the ground.” He asked, “Do we know if we are going to wake up in the morning?”

Earl remembered Williams telling the cops as he was pointing at his chest as he told the police that he was going to kill himself and asked cops to shoot him. “I know what this is, a black male and two Owasso officers, homicide or suicide, take two bullets. Eliah (his wife) is out of my life, she is out of my life, take a shot, what is wrong with you all, are you scared? It’s a suicide, do I need to provoke you?”

Wolery said that Williams took a “threatening” step in the direction of him and the other cop Jack Wells, who pepper sprayed Williams. Wells took Williams to the ground, and pressed his knee into his back. Earl then said he visibly saw his son’s left foot drag when the officers picked him up and escorted him to the patrol car.

Earl questioned why his son was being arrested and taken away, one of the fully armed cops said because replied, because he was interfering with a police officer. Paramedics arrived and washed pepper spray out of Williams’s eyes and face when Earl and his son exchanged their final goodbyes.
The next day Earl called the Tulsa County jail to set up a time to visit his son, but they told him that it was too early. Earl, full of worry at this point was told that his son was transferred to medical section of the jail. John Lnuk, a staff member in the jail’s mental health department, received the call from the concerned father on Oct. 24.

Earl said Lnuk stated Williams was saying, “I want a drink of water.” Earl became more concerned asking if he was ok, Lnuk said that he was fine and that “He’s acting like he’s paralyzed, but we know he’s not.”
Two days of continued attempts to see his son Earl got through to a chaplain asking him to please check on him. Finally on the 27th, another chaplain visited Williams and delivered the dire results to Earl, Williams wasn’t responding very well at all and Earl needed to visit the jail as soon as possible.

When Earl made it to the jail that day, Lnuk told Earl that the staff was taking Williams to the hospital. Shortly he learned that his beloved son was dead.
He fell to the concrete in the booking area and checked the box marked suicidal on an intake form. Williams wasn’t put on suicide watch, instead they threw him in a 24/7 video-monitored holding cell to wait to be transported to Tulsa county jail.

His mental illness continued, he was screaming, dancing aimlessly, crawling on all fours and slammed his head into the cell wall and the Owasso police didn’t help an obviously distraught man. Upon Williams arrival to the booking area at the county jail, on Oct. 22nd, Owasso officer Jack Wells admitted to slamming him to the floor while trying to place handcuffs on him. Officer Wells told Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations (OSBI) that he “landed on top of Elliott’s shoulder and head,” and that the prisoner “appeared to be fine with no injuries.”

In an internal affairs report, the sheriff’s department stated, Williams struggled after being knocked to the ground, “At this time it is obvious that Williams is having a difficult time standing.” Sheriff Glanz and the investigators said in a May 2013 deposition that after watching the surveillance video, they were concerned Williams had broken his neck. Glanz said “After viewing it, I think that the—the officers probably could have done more as well as medical to provide for his care.”

Court papers allege, Williams was screaming that he couldn’t walk. He was yelling, “Cut it out of my belly.”  He displayed aberrant posturing in his hands, a characteristic of a serious brain injury, looked like he was having a seizure. He never completed the booking process.

Court documents state, Williams was placed in a holding cell, where he banged his head into the glass on the cell door, then collapsed to the floor. An inmate present in the cell told Sheriff Glanz that no one checked on Williams for at least 20 minutes. Williams repeatedly told nurses he couldn’t move and it felt like his neck was broken. A nurse told investigators she massaged his neck for a little while, but left him in the cell. She relayed to the next nurse that Williams was “fine” regardless of his complaints.

Finally when a jail captain checked on Williams, he had defecated and urinated  on himself. The captain noted that it was obvious Williams had mental health issues but was sure that he was still “faking” the paralysis. A nurse eventually got around to calling it a medical emergency.  Jailers lifted Williams onto a trash bag lined gurney while he continued screaming that something needed to be cut out of him. These actions showed “he had serious and emergent mental health and medical needs.” When Williams was taken to the showers in the medical unit a nurse reprimanded by saying he should be “ashamed” of his bad behavior and to “quit faking”, followed by telling him to get his “nasty ass” in the shower. Jailers struggled to get Williams into the shower stall but he couldn’t move his body. A sergeant just dumped Williams off the three-foot high gurney, and the cops forcefully stripped him.

Chief Deputy of the jail, Michelle Robinette, admitted her employees just “dumped” Williams’s body into the shower. When questioned why she agreed the jailers’ actions were wrong, Robinette responded, “Because you don’t dump people off of gurneys.” Her staff confessed to leaving Williams alone in the shower for an hour. Williams was then stuck back in his cell, lying still on his back without clothes. He told an officer he wasn’t able to move and couldn’t reach the cup of water that was left for him. “Look, there’s that water in the cup, and I haven’t drank it. I can’t move.” The officer found a nurse to notify about it but she ignored the claim, “[Williams] continues to tell nursing staff here that he just cannot walk… Wants to be waited on.”

A nurse and a counselor reported Williams was “lying on the bed without clothes and refusing to answer any questions, acted as if paralyzed, and saying I want water.” Later that night, an officer said Williams was constantly yelling. She alerted the nursing staff that he “wants something” and requested they “at least go down there and look at him.” Out of all the nurses, they never inconvenienced themselves to do a welfare check on Williams.

The following day, the mental health staff held a meeting to discuss Williams. Bypassing a neurological exam or any other care, they choose to place Williams in a 24/7 video-monitored cell to see if he was “faking” the injury. At 8:30 a.m. the nest morning, two officers dragged Williams and his blanket to another cell and were nice enough to include a Styrofoam cup of water at his feet out of reach. “This was the only cup of water placed in the cell from the 25th until the time Mr. Williams met his demise on October 27th.”

A psychiatrist visited with Williams for the only time at 9:07 a.m.. Williams told him that he couldn’t move, and wasn’t aware of where he was. Now he was so thirsty that all he wanted was a bucket of water to drink. At 10:11 a.m., a jailer dropped a food tray onto the concrete floor of his cell, still out of Williams’s reach. He tried to get his body to move so he could reach the cup of water between 1:15 p.m. and 2:12 p.m., with no one there to assist him. A staff member tossed another food container into the cell at 4:41 p.m. Williams struggled to reach and open the container and could not lift the water cup. A night shift nurse said that she was appalled by Williams’s dire condition. She stated that he had white residue on the side of his mouth and face, and still couldn’t get up. She asked the detention officers to let her in to help him, but they said no, telling her it was unsafe to enter.

At 7:30 a.m. a counselor visited with him through the cell door and took notes citing, “psychosomatic paralysis.” She taunted Williams by telling him “if he wanted to be bailed out by his parents… he would have to walk to the car.”  About three hours passed, Williams was desperately trying to lift some food off the tray that was within his reach but spilled the cup of water that was never refilled.

At 5:10 a.m. on the 27th, the final food tray was delivered to Williams’s cell, placed at his feet and way out of his reach. The doctor on duty saw him three hours later, lying on the ground with saliva gathering under his head. The doctor witnessed discharged vomit in Williams’s mouth and several of the still unopened food containers. The concerned doctor immediately notified the  medical director that Williams “looked sick, needed a CT scan and needed to go to the hospital.” The medical director, ignored the warning and did nothing, but later testified that he  didn’t recall talking to the about this and that “if it happened, it was my bad.” The director’s carelessness was explained by, “People just die sometimes.”

At 11:01 a.m., Williams was motionless, silent, and appeared stiff, nurses made “cosmetic attempts” at CPR. One nurse would only perform the lifesaving maneuver while in an upright position. Efforts were late, weak, and unproductive, his lifeless body could not be restored. He unfortunately perished on a cold concrete floor in a county jail among fellow humans who undoubtedly had little care in the world about him.  The medical examiner recorded his findings and ruled that Williams death was from “complications of vertebro-spinal injuries due to blunt force trauma” along with severe dehydration. No matter what the cause of Williams’s ultimately fatal injuries, lawyers for his family are placing the entire ordeal on Tulsa County’s “deliberate indifference” to his personal care, with the complete disregard to human life that eventually resulted in his untimely death. In the United States of America, the supposed “land of the Free”, an Army Veteran with mental disabilities gets treated like he was in Auschwitz, spending the last five days of his life in a cold four-walled cell in the Tulsa County jail, obviously paralyzed. With his pleas for help being completely ignored the 37-year-old man was left unattended like a piece of garbage and allowed him to die.

By Andre’ Gabriel Esparza – DontComply.com

Sourced From: The Daily Beast