LaShawn Thompson.Photo:Michael D. Harper
Michael D. Harper
“It’s enough that the bed bugs and lice sat there and ate my brother to death, but it’s the neglect that hurts me the most,” Brad McCray, Thompson’s brother, said during the press conference.
Know Your Rights Camp — former NFL playerColin Kaepernick’s nonprofit organization — paid for the independent autopsy, one of the family’s attorneys, Michael Harper, confirmed to ABC.
LaShawn Thompson.Michael D. Harper
Thompson was arrested three months earlier, on June 12, 2022, and was put into the psychiatric unit of the jail after officials reportedly determined he had unspecified mental health issues, according to the statement.
The sheriff’s office acknowledged the “dilapidated and rapidly eroding conditions” of the facility, and said Sheriff Patrick “Pat” Labat was launching a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding Thompson’s death.
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The sheriff said last fall that officials were taking “immediate actions” in the jail including, spending $500,000 to address the infestation of bed bugs, lice and other vermin, updating protocols for security rounds, adding additional staff members to the mental health unit, and transferring more than 600 inmates to other counties in an effort to help relieve overcrowding.Conditions in the state’s prisons have been under increasing scrutiny.Last month, a Georgia prison inmate’s decomposing body was found in his cell, five days after he had died,The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported.
source: people.com
