Jailers let schizophrenic man starve to death in jail cell: lawsuit

Security video shows a 29-year-old schizophrenic man locked in solitary confinement starving to death over three weeks, a lawsuit claims.

In July of 2021, Joshua McLemore was taken to a hospital after apartment managers entered his home and found him incoherent, and nude on the floor after his mother called them saying she was worried he was having a psychotic episode, The Appeal reported.

While he was at the hospital, McLemore grabbed a nurse’s hair, which resulted in police arresting him on battery charges.

At the Jackson County Jail in Indiana, McLemore was stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement without toilet access, according to security footage that has been seen by The Appeal.

"Surveillance footage over 21 days shows him screaming; rocking back and forth; licking the walls; smearing his feces and urine all over the floor; violently shoving a plastic bottle into his rectum; throwing his food on the ground; and eating the styrofoam food trays that made their way through the thin slot at the cell door," The Appeal's report stated.

A lawsuit says that McLemore lost 45 pounds in less than a month and jail staff rarely checked on him. The video footage shows his body visibly shrinking over the weeks until a point where he can barely hold his head up, The Appeal said.

On August 8, jail staff finally realized he needed medical care, but it was too late. The suit says doctors listed his cause of death as “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink with altered mental status due to untreated schizophrenia.”

Family attorney Edwin Budge said he could not understand why no one called 911 earlier.

“I think that’s the million-dollar question. I don’t think there’s a good answer. It’s a systemic deficiency that runs from the top down.” The family is suing the county, the sheriff’s office, and Advanced Correctional Healthcare, the for-profit medical company that cared for McLemore in jail, for allegedly violating McLemore’s civil rights," Budge told The Appeal, adding that the incident was “not a mistake. This was day after day of neglect.”

Read the full report over at The Appeal.