ST. LOUIS – In a St. Louis Justice Center jail video, 32-year-old Carlton Bernard appeared too weak to hold up his own head.
“All they had to do was give him some insulin or just send him to the hospital,” Shantae Winston, Carlton’s mother, said.
Carlton died on Aug. 20, 2023, from what an autopsy said was lack of insulin and dehydration.
“I never got to say goodbye to him the proper way,” Winston said. “At least if I knew he was sick…” She could not fight through tears to continue.
Bernard’s sister, Auvion Cook, said it was obvious her brother was in distress.
“It breaks my heart,” she said, “…to see him in that condition and he looked as if he’s unaware of his surroundings.”
Their attorney, Mark Pedroli, is preparing a possible lawsuit.
“Upon his death, he weighed 107 pounds. He lost 33 pounds—22% of his body mass—in about a month,” Pedroli said.
“There were food trays and drink trays untouched stacked up in his cell. Therefore, the guards, City of St. Louis, and Yes Care all knew that he wasn’t being nourished, he wasn’t drinking, and he wasn’t being treated for his diabetes. What did they expect to happen?”
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Pedroli also obtained video showing a jail nurse and guard saw Bernard lying naked on his cell floor more than three hours before he died.
“Inexplicably, they walk away,” he said. “They leave him languishing in his cell alone likely in a diabetic coma suffering.”
This is the case FOX 2 found out about before the jail’s own oversight board found out in August 2023.
“It is alarming” Board Chairman Reverend Darryl Gray said back then, adding, “We can’t even find out if someone has died in their custody.”
It’s far from the only lack of communication, as Winston said her son went from calling daily before getting locked up – to never calling.
“He never completed his paperwork or something to call be able to make a phone call. I thought you got a free phone call at least,” Winston said. “I called down to the jail and they gave me the runaround.”
She thinks she would’ve known by her son’s voice that he was sick. And the circumstances of his detainment – confusing to the family – a third-degree assault charge in which he was accused of pulling an AirPod from a woman’s ear and striking her on the side of her face in the process.
Back in 2023, the Division of Corrections reported it was investigating the circumstances surrounding Bernard’s death. We followed up with the city on Thursday, after our interview with Bernard’s family, and were told that the jail had “no comment.”
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