Damaris Rodriguez

On December 30, 2017, Damaris Rodriguez experienced a mental health episode at home. Her husband called 911, requesting medical assistance, but the police first. According to a lawsuit filed by her family, sheriff’s deputies “incited a confrontation and then arrested" her. Rodriguez was taken to South Correctional Entity Jail where she “spent the next four days alone in a cell, naked, surrounded by her own urine and vomit, and fighting both mentally and physically against her own hallucinations.” “SCORE corrections officers and non-physician medical staff covered the window of her cell so they did not need to look at her, put towels in front of the door so her vomit would not leak into the hallway, and then ignored her,” the lawsuit alleged. “She did not eat. She barely slept. She never saw a doctor and was never taken to a hospital.” Rodriguez developed ketoacidosis, a treatable metabolic condition characterized by insatiable thirst and excessive water intake. The lawsuit alleged that corrections officers and medical staff were “aware of the dangers of water intoxication” but “did not help her.” They moved her to a different cell without a sink and signed off on welfare checks that never occurred. Rodriguez did not eat while in custody. She died on January 3, four days into her incarceration. “Although ketoacidosis and water intoxication were the physiological mechanisms that shut her body down, the root cause of Damaris’s death was a system that did not care about her,” the lawsuit alleged.

Lawsuit alleges "inhumane confinement and deprivation of adequate medical care." Family’s attorney, Nathan Bingham.

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