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When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence:
Growing up, Matt Santana and Savion Hall were inseparable. The two met in middle school while hanging out with mutual friends in Midland, a West Texas oil town. After realizing they lived on the same block, Hall, a year younger than Santana, started sleeping over so they could play video games late into the night. As they got older, Hall and Santana remained dear friends, often turning to each other for help. Santana, who suffers from anxiety, says Hall sometimes spent hours by his side helping calm him down. "He would stay with me until I felt better, whether it was just driving around, listening to music or talking," he says. When Hall had asthma attacks, Santana would make sure he got his breathing treatments, which included inhalers and nebulizers, sometimes taking him to the hospital three or four times a month. The two looked out for each other. "It was special having a friend like that since childhood," Santana says. "I was hoping we would grow old together."
Then Hall was arrested and taken to the Midland County jail last summer. Court records show that he was accused of failing to wear a GPS monitor and testing positive for amphetamines—violations of the probation agreement he'd signed with the local district attorney's office to resolve a drug possession charge earlier that year. Nearly three weeks after Hall entered lockup for the alleged probation violations, jail doctors shipped him to a local hospital due to breathing problems and low oxygen levels, according to a report filed with the Texas Attorney General's office.
Friends say Hall's asthma attacks were frequent and severe enough that they learned to recognize the wheezing and heaving as signs that he needed immediate treatment. But by the time Hall arrived at the hospital from the jail, his condition had deteriorated to the point that medical staff had to resuscitate him. Santana, who saw Hall in the hospital, says his friend showed little brain activity and suffered back-to-back seizures before his family decided to take him off life support eight days later, on July 19, 2019. He was 30 years old. (Hall's family declined to comment for this story.)
Seemingly preventable in-custody deaths like Hall's are common. But while allegations of medical neglect proliferate in lockupsacrossTexas and the rest of the country, rarely do they result in criminal charges. Hall's case is different. Following a Texas Rangers probe, a Midland County grand jury this summer indicted six jail nurses on charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and knowingly falsifying records for Hall's breathing treatments.
Midland County initially reported that Hall died from "natural causes," the most common cause of death reported by jails in Texas. Nearly 800 in-custody deaths since 2005—slightly more than half of all jail deaths recorded in the state during that time—were attributed to natural causes, according to data compiled by the Texas Justice Initiative. But in recent years, lawsuits, Texas Rangers reports, and newspaper investigations have shown many of those to be preventable tragedies that appear to result from negligence on the part of jail staff. Still, justice for families and accountability for those responsible is elusive.
Local jails in Texas, which mostly hold pretrial detainees who haven't been convicted, have been required to report all deaths in custody to the state since 2009.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2020, @03:30AM (11 children)
Another dead millennial drug addict. Good. We need less of those.
God dammit. It's past the first of the month. Where the fuck is my fucking pension check? I earned my pension by shooting hippies in the head and I deserve to get paid for life. God damn fucking millennials aren't working hard enough to pay me my entitlements on time.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @11:27AM (10 children)
Not only is parent a troll - parent is an especially stupid troll. There have always been drugs, there will always be drugs and drug abuse. But, Boomers created today's super-pandemic of drug abuse. There was no hippie culture, until the Boomers reached high school age. All that free love shit, rock and roll, etc ad nauseum - all Boomers.
If millenials are fucked up, it's because fucked up boomers raised them to be that way.
But, thanks for playing.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 03 2020, @01:09PM (8 children)
So people have no agency, no responsibility, no free will?
Even 5 minutes would have shown that the guy was an asshole. 2 illegitimate daughters, too busy "doin' shit" to bother with them or the mother, Never worked, just another juvenile delinquent who didn't grow up when they became an adult. Got a relative who's the same,, was given plenty of opportunities, preferred drugs and crime.
The jail was in the wrong, but the jails are full of stupid people who think they're smart and, as in this case, could have abided by the probation agreement and still been alive - at least until their next fuck-up.
Yes, society is screwed up, but you can't ask for everyone else to look out for you when you refuse to look out for yourself because you're a lazy no-ambition irresponsible shit.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @01:30PM (7 children)
Huh? I respond to one specific post who denigrates millenials for drug use. I point out that Boomers are responsible for an entire drug culture. And, our response is relevant, how? Did you respond to the wrong post? You claim to be nearly blind, maybe you just clicked the wrong "reply" button?
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 03 2020, @02:44PM (6 children)
Can't blame the boomers or the millennials or tend for everything. There have been people who lack any sense of personal responsibility in every generation. And it eventually catches up to them. Either they kill each other trying to rip each other off (like when the cops went on strike in the previous century, crime went down except for druggies killing each other, which meant fewer property crimes to pay for drug habits).
This guy is not a new phenomenon. You can't blame everything on the system. You want to sit around all day getting stoned and playing Xbox , and committing petty crimes to finance your "lifestyle ", consider yourself lucky to get a deal to wear an ankle bracelet and drug screening. Some places you try to rip off you'll end up shot:
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @03:26PM (5 children)
I did mention that drugs existed long before the boomer generation. That video 'Reefer Madness' was made between the world wars, I believe - no I'm not looking it up right now, but it preceeded boomers by a couple decades or so. But, giving "credit" where it is due, the boomer generation created the drug culture that we are all familiar with. The 'War on Drugs' came about in response to that drug culture. Nothing I've said here denies or negates the existence of drugs over the past 10,000 years, I'm only pointing out that the boomer generation created our current day drug culture.
And, nothing in your present post explains WTF you were attempting to say in your previous post. Let me simply repeat myself: badmouthing millenials for being druggies is some really hypocritical bullshit. Right or wrong, they live in the world that has been passed down to them. Millenials didn't spontaneously create the drug culture, they didn't invent any of the drugs on the street, drug laws weren't enacted in the past ten years in response to millenials.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 03 2020, @04:51PM (4 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @05:05PM (3 children)
The 'Reefer Madness' video precedes the boomer generation by centuries? Oh-kay - if you say so.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 03 2020, @05:20PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @06:13PM
I posted above the exact quote from my original post. Have you taken your meds today? Or, did you just wake up looking for an argument? You took my post out of context, then you did a partial quote of my post, out of context. Sorry, better luck next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2020, @09:48PM
Man, you touche'd yourself
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday September 05 2020, @04:30PM
The best hippie ideals were peace and love and respect for nature over the worship of money, guns, authoritarianism and Puritan work ethics, so it stands to reason you don't like 'em, Runaway.
Most of the boomers that moved on from the hippie culture obviously weren't just sell-outs: they had just been following the trend superficially without ever really believing in its ideals.
Basically, most humans are selfish, fucked up, corrupt. Generational comparisons are a distraction when used for anything more than comparing different periods of history.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?