Watch: Cops laugh as mentally ill inmate strapped naked to chair for 46 hours dies
Andrew Holland in the restraint chair where he was strapped for 46 hours/Screenshot

Disturbing footage of an inmate in a California jail contradicts the official account given of his death, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports.


A dozen inmates have died at the San Louis Obispo jail since 2012, the paper reports, which is triple the national average.

Andrew Holland had suffered from schizophrenia since his early 20s and frequently ended up in jail for minor crimes.

Holland was put in an isolation cell where he began hitting himself in January 2017. A group of deputies in riot-armor carried him to another area and strapped him to a chair—where he was left for nearly two days without the chance to use a toliet.

Holland was eventually taken out of the chair and back to his cell, where he died. The official report of the incident said he was “found unconscious and unresponsive” and was not “under the continual care of a physician."

But footage from inside the jail shows six deputies standing outside his cell watching as he rolls around on the cell floor and dies, his eyes open. The Tribune had to review 100 hours of jail surveillance footage to document the incident, discovering during the review that deputies laughed as the man was strapped to the chair. He writhed on the floor as a result of the embolism that had traveled to his brain, struggling to breathe before losing consciousness and dying.

As some officers work to perform CPR on him, others smirk and laugh.

The footage has outraged the coastal California community, with a petition asking the sheriff to resign now being circulated.

[caption id="attachment_1238056" align="alignnone" width="578"] A deputy laughs as medical staff try to perform CPR on deceased inmate Andrew Holland/Screenshot[/caption]

In July 2017, Holland’s family won a $5 million settlement from the county.

You can watch some of the disturbing footage below.