California man in health crisis dies in jail cell after being left unattended for 3 days, family says

A Northern California man died in jail after he fell unresponsive and languished virtually unattended in his cell for at least three days, the prisoner’s loved ones said in a federal lawsuit.

Maurice Monk, 45, was the victim of “utterly callous and indifferent” lack of action by law enforcement and medical staff at Santa Rita Jail, according to the family’s lawsuit, amended on Tuesday and citing more than 150 videos taken from Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy body cameras.

Monk was declared dead on Nov. 15, 2021. His family’s civil action —filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco — names as defendants Alameda County, which operates the jail, Wellpath Community Care, the private contractors who provide healthcare to prisoners at Santa Rita Jail, and various individual deputies and employees of the facility.

Monk’s death certificate listed hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause of his passing, but the man’s family disputes that.

“That’s not what killed Maurice Monk. It was the failure of the jail’s nurses and guards to ensure Maurice received his medications to treat his mental illness and chronic high blood pressure,” family attorney Adanté Pointer said in a statement.

“They literally did nothing more than stare at him and throw food and medications into his cell like he was an animal in a pen at the zoo. Despite the obvious crisis, not a single guard or nurse thought enough about Mr. Monk to call for help.” 

Monk was first booked into jail following an incident on a public bus in Oakland on Oct. 11, 2021, when he suffered a “mental health crisis,” refused to put on a mask and argued with the driver, his family said.

Bail was set at $2,500, but Monk’s family members said they couldn’t afford it so he had to sit in custody. Monk was found dead in his cell on Nov. 15, 2021, but “it is likely that Mr. Monk was dead well before this,” the lawsuit said.

Jailers and medical staff visited Monk’s cell several times a day on Nov. 12, 13 and 14 and each time he was face down in the bed, naked from the waist down and not responding to any verbal commands, the lawsuit said.

Other allegations from the lawsuit include:

• Food had been left for Monk and none had been touched, prompting one jail employee to allegedly say to another on Nov. 12: “But there’s one thing you should know. He hasn’t been eating for a day and a half.”
• When a jail employee on Nov. 13 told a deputy that Monk was soiled and did not appear to be moving, the jailer allegedly said: “I know he’s just peeing on himself. Come on, you know how it is. There are people just s—ing themselves.”
• When Monk appeared to be in exactly the same position again on Nov. 14, a jail employee told a deputy that the inmate had “been like that for two days or so” but the law enforcement agent did not act, the family’s civil claim maintained.

Deputies didn’t take decisive action until Nov. 15 when they went into the cell, touched his body and tried to get a pulse — but by this point “Monk was unresponsive and was ‘stiff,’ ” the lawsuit said.

Jailers dragged Monk off his bed and performed CPR but he remained unresponsive and was declared dead.

Representatives of Santa Rita Jail, Alameda County and Wellpath, based in Nashville, Tennessee, did not immediately return messages seeking their comments on Wednesday.