A man with "serious mental and psychiatric needs" died from hypothermia in January of last year after he was taken to an Alabama jail and placed in a concrete drunk tank known as "the freezer." His death was later ruled a homicide, records show.
Anthony Don Mitchell died after "spending 14 days incarcerated under horrendous conditions" at the Walker County Jail, according a lawsuit filed by his mother, who accuses corrections officers at the jail of intentionally exposing her son to freezing temperatures which led to his death, USA Today reported.
She also accuses the officers of denying him his medication and use of the toilet.
Medical examiners ruled Mitchell's death was the result of hypothermia as well as "sepsis resulting from infections injuries obtained during incarceration and medical neglect."
"Tony’s death was wrongful, the result of horrific, malicious abuse and mountains of deliberate indifference," a lawyer for the Mitchell family wrote in the suit. As USA Today points out, no criminal charges have been filed in the case.
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Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith, jail administrator Justin White, and more than a dozen other jail staffers were also named in the suit.
The suit alleges that Mitchell lived "in complete isolation" and suffered from "serious medical and psychiatric needs including but not limited to severe drug addiction, psychosis, and malnourishment."
Mitchell was arrested after shots were fired while officers were conducting a welfare check on him after family members said he was having a "mental break down." Police say Mitchell brandished a handgun and fired once towards officers before fleeing.
When he was found in some nearby woods, he had spray-painted his face black "because he was planning to enter a portal to hell located inside his house," according to officers.
During his time at the jail, Mitchell was kept in cell BK5, the “drunk tank," while either mostly or completely naked on a bare concrete floor. On the nights of Jan. 25 to Jan. 26, "corrections officers intentionally caused extremely cold air to blow through the roof vents" in to his cell, the lawsuit alleges.
"BK5, referred to by some longtime corrections staff and inmates as 'the freezer' because of the ability of corrections staff to subject inmates to frigid temperatures there, would have been the coldest cell in the booking area," the suit reads. "Inmates housed there report being able to see their breath because it was so cold and that their digits would turn numb."
Video captured two corrections officers "clowning and laughing as Tony lies motionless and naked on the bare cement floor in the open cell behind them, obviously in severe medical distress and in need of immediate emergency medical treatment."
The officers "did not call an ambulance for him despite his obvious need for emergency medical treatment," according to the suit.
