Officers at South Bay jail ignored dying woman, lawsuit alleges

Ayesha Johnson was civilly committed to receive treatment for her alcohol abuse disorder. Hours later, she died on the floor of a jail cell at the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay.

The father of the woman who died in a jail cell while awaiting treatment for alcohol abuse disorder filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday, claiming officers ignored her while she laid on a call floor for more than an hour.

“They did nothing while she was in that lock-up to make sure that she was okay,” George Leontire, lawyer for Ayesha Marie Johnson’s estate, said. “This is a person that needed immediate medical care, that’s what the judge ordered, that she was in imminent risk of danger. Instead they put her in a lock-up and paid no attention to her.”

Johnson died July 28, 2021 while in custody of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department after she was involuntarily, civilly committed for treatment for alcohol use disorder. According to the suit filed in Suffolk Superior Court by her father Reginald White, a judge ordered Johnson to be transported to the Women’s Addiction Treatment Center.

Instead, Johnson, a mother of two, was brought to the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay, according to the suit. There, she spent more than an hour lying on the floor, allegedly unresponsive, before she was found by multiple officials who waited five minutes to perform life-saving measures, the complaint said.

“The sheriff’s department has virtually no regulation or process outlined for how to treat these people when they’re in their custody and how this whole process is to work,” Leontire said.

In Massachusetts, someone can be involuntarily committed to a designated facility for treatment for an alcohol or substance use disorder, most likely as a last option for families, under Section 35. The lawsuit alleges the jail where Johnson died is not a designated facility.

“Sending a person civilly committed for treatment and recovery to a correctional facility is morally wrong, not evidence based, and counter therapeutic,” the lawsuit said, citing that former Governor Charlie Baker even signed legislation in 2016 to stop sending female Section 35 patients to prisons.

Johnson was one of three people who died in the custody of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department during one month in 2021, which at the time prompted an investigation by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. A spokesperson for the DA confirmed all three of those cases, including Johnson’s, closed without any criminal charges recommended.

What happened to Ayesha Johnson?

After Johnson was ordered to be civilly committed, she was transported by officers Ian O’Rourke and Joseph Chiarenza, who knew she was not convicted of a crime and that she already had vomited at court, according to the lawsuit.

When the two officers made a stop at Boston’s Nashua Street Jail, Johnson was dry heaving and retching. But, they did not check on her or see if she needed medical attention, the lawsuit alleges. They then helped Johnson out of the van, removed her handcuffs and leg irons, and put her into a cell at the South Bay House of Correction.

A few minutes later, Johnson fell off the cell bench and onto the floor, where she laid for 68 minutes, the suit says.

The other four officers named as defendants — Daniel Fitzgibbon, Joseph Kitterick, Tessa Dorn, and Romand Cook — were “chatting among themselves” and “relaxing” with “their feet up on the booking desk” but didn’t check on Johnson, who they should’ve seen through the video monitors, the suit alleges.

Kitterick even went to a nearby cell and didn’t check on Johnson, according to the suit.

“Fitzgibbon stared directly at the video monitor, but still … failed to concern himself with Ms. Johnson’s wellbeing and did not notice Ms. Johnson lying on the cell floor,” the lawsuit alleges. Shortly after, Fitzgibbon stood outside her cell, looked through the window and saw her lying on the floor, and kicked the door.

According to the suit, he then entered the cell about an hour after she fell off the cell bench. He allegedly kicked her left thigh and shook her left foot before leaving the cell “aware that she was nonresponsive.”

Fitzgibbon radioed to alert a “man down” but did not attempt life-saving measures, the lawsuit says. Kitterick and John Thomas, a nurse named as a defendant in the suit, also allegedly “failed to begin life-saving measures.”

Chest compressions began five minutes after she was found unresponsive, the suit says, and she was declared dead about 30 minutes later.

The officers told investigators that 30-minute checks, a medical evaluation, or other post-booking orders don’t necessarily apply to people who are civilly commited, which the suit alleges is not true.

“This is a person who was ordered to be taken to a medical facility. You don’t treat them as prisoners. You treat them as people who are sick,” Leontire said. “She was treated as less than as though she was a criminal. She didn’t even get the benefits as though she were a criminal in terms of the way she was processed when brought to the jail.”

The suit also names Superintendent of the House of Correction William Sweeney, Assistant Superintendent Sylvia Thomas, Shift Commander Frank Taylor, and Assistant Shift Commander Shaunette Fitzpatrick as defendants.

Johnson’s estate is seeking at least $3 million in damages, with the lawsuit claiming her due process rights and civil rights were violated and the Sheriff’s Department negligently and/or recklessly caused her wrongful death and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Governor Maura Healey, the sheriff’s department, Sheriff Steven Tompkins, and the union representing the officers did not return a request for comment. Robbie Goldstein, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Brooke Doyle, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, who were both named in the suit, declined to comment.

The entire complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court is available here.