Paper: Houston Chronicle

Date: Mon 12/17/2007

Section: A Page: 1 Edition: 3 STAR

DETAILS EMERGE IN PASADENA JAIL DEATH / Inmates say plea for help ignored, allege pattern of neglect that may violate state codes

By ROBERT CROWE

STAFF

Last July, in the basement of Pasadena's police building, Pedro Gonzales Jr. moaned in pain while locked in a jail cell. He and other inmates begged jailers to call a doctor. "

`We're not gonna call an ambulance unless we see blood,' " former inmate Joshua David Zamora recalls one jailer saying. "The guards kept telling us, `He's not sick. He's just acting up.'

" In a nearby cell, Patrick Beaudoin heard the ruckus grow louder as inmates yelled to the guards, "Boss man. Help this guy. He needs a doctor."

The inmates eventually settled down after jailers pulled the 51-year-old Gonzales out of the cell he shared with Zamora, 18, and another man. After jailers returned Gonzales to the cell about an hour later, Zamora went to sleep.

Gonzales was subsequently released from jail, then rearrested about an hour later and brought back to a holding cell.

When Zamora woke, on the morning of July 21, Gonzales was gone, but the jail was once again buzzing about the scruffy little man who had seemed delirious while complaining of chest pain the night before. This time it was because Gonzales' bruised body, in a torn shirt and filthy, blood-splattered jeans, was lying dead in the holding cell.

An autopsy revealed Gonzales' death, ruled a homicide, was caused when one of eight fractured ribs punctured a lung, filling his chest with blood.

New details about Gonzales' alleged treatment by Pasadena jailers surfaced after the Houston Chronicle obtained the names of former inmates through the Texas Public Information Act. In interviews, they said jailers neglected Gonzales' repeated requests for medical attention, which challenges the Pasadena Police Department's assertion that Gonzales had refused medical treatment.

Former inmates said their own experiences inside the jail show a pattern of neglect by jailers and inhumane conditions that experts say could violate many regulations by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which does not inspect municipal lockups.

After a four-month investigation by Pasadena police and the Harris County District Attorney's Office, a grand jury could decide within weeks whether officers involved in Gonzales' death committed a crime. The FBI's Houston office will review the county and Pasadena investigations.

In light of the new details, activists are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to launch a full investigation.

Police said Gonzales died in the jail about five hours after officers Jason W. Buckaloo and Christopher S. Jones rearrested him on suspicion of public intoxication around 2 a.m. July 21, about an hour after his release.

Police told the Texas Attorney General's Office the death was an apparent ``justifiable homicide" because Gonzales, who was unarmed, resisted arrest and kicked the officers. A woman, however, called 911 that night to report witnessing officers beating a motionless man at the time and place Gonzales was arrested.

`I know what I saw'

The police department said the officers would not comment on the case. Police Chief Michael Massey also declined to comment.

Police did not investigate witness Evelyn Moreno's phone call until days after the death, when she called police a second time after learning from a Chronicle story that Gonzales died.

"I know what I saw," said Moreno, who agreed to an interview after a reporter told her Pasadena Capt. A.H. "Bud" Corbett said her description of the incident was an "emotional" interpretation of officers arresting a combative man. "That made me mad when I knew they were trying to discredit me. He wasn't resisting. They were beating him."

Police said Gonzales was treated by East Texas Medical Center paramedics at the jail after he collapsed while being booked between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. on July 21. He was not transported to a hospital because he refused further treatment and also signed a medical refusal form, police said. He was placed in a holding cell, where he was found dead about five hours later.

Family members don't believe he would have signed the form. East Texas Medical Center officials have declined to discuss the case.

"If the signature is real, it looks like it could have been made under duress," said the family's lawyer, Clyde "Jay" Jackson.

Former inmates interviewed for this story said they don't understand why Gonzales would have signed a medical refusal form when he and other inmates had begged jailers throughout the night to call a doctor.

"None of what they're saying adds up," said Kimberley Hampton, a New Caney woman who was jailed at the same time as Gonzales on traffic warrants.

Hampton, 40, said she made a phone call near the jail booking area sometime after 2 a.m. July 21, when she saw jailers yell at Gonzales to "shut up" when he tried to get their attention from his holding cell.

"He was hunched over; he looked sick and his pants were filthy, like he had been in a fight," she said.

Hampton had been taken to the jail early on July 20, after she was arrested in Sugar Land for Pasadena traffic warrants. A man standing in a holding cell who resembled Gonzales smiled at her, she said. The next day, as she used a phone near the booking area to call a friend, she noticed that the man she saw earlier in the holding cell was disheveled and two of his front teeth were missing. Autopsy photos show Gonzales was missing two front teeth. Gonzales' family said no teeth were missing before he went to jail.

Sometime after Hampton got off the phone, Jessica Salazar was booked into the jail after her arrest on a traffic warrant. It was after 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. July 21, Salazar said, when she looked across the hall to see Gonzales' pale, motionless body lying face-down in the holding cell.

"I turned to the jailers and said, `Hey, he don't look so good,' " Salazar said. "They told me, `Mind your own business.' "

Capt. Corbett said he was not prepared to confirm or deny that jailers had neglected or used force on Gonzales.

Hampton said her own experience in the jail was harrowing. Although her doctors had ordered her to wear two walking casts because she was recovering from broken ankles in a car accident, she said Pasadena jailers took them away during her time there.

"I can only describe it as atrocities," she said. "What happened in there was egregious for so many reasons."

Sarahi Claudette Sierra said she was in jail two days, jeans soaked in menstrual blood, before she was given another pad or allowed to shower.

``I was there for traffic tickets, and they treated me like an animal," she said.

Sierra did not see Gonzales during her stay, but said she heard screaming from the men's side of the jail on the night of July 20 and morning of July 21.

Not subject to inspections

Because it is not a county lockup, the Pasadena Jail is not subject to annual inspections by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards or required to meet the agency's minimum standards.

Allegations by Pasadena inmates of practices and conditions that would not meet state standards include not providing a change of clothes for inmates after 48 hours, denying them regular showers, forcing inmates to sleep on metal bunks without pillows or blankets, and not providing enough toilet paper or sanitary napkins.

"What these people are describing would violate many standards," said Commission Director Adan Munoz.

Corbett said there "is no excuse" for the conditions described by the former inmates, but he suggested they may have been lying for their own benefit.

"If what they're saying is true, they need to get down here and file complaints," Corbett said.

Hampton and others said they fear retaliation for filing complaints and have little faith that anything would change.

Records provided under the Texas Public Information Act show that 27 police officers were disciplined over the past seven years for various Pasadena PD policy violations. But no officers were suspended, fired or demoted as a result of a complaint by an inmate or arrestee, records show.

The night he died

Just hours after Gonzales was found dead, Hampton slipped on water leaking from a toilet in her cell. She was transported by East Texas Medical Center ambulance to Bayshore Medical Center, which sent her a bill for $600.

Zamora said he briefly spoke to police, but others said Pasadena investigators never interviewed them about Gonzales.

Before the city of Pasadena released 52 pages of municipal court records for these inmates and others jailed between July 20 and July 30, one former inmate, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted the Chronicle to say that jailers had neglected Gonzales when he needed a doctor.

Zamora did not see bruises, a torn shirt, blood-stained clothing and cuts on Gonzales as depicted in autopsy photos and described by Hampton and Salazar.

"He didn't look like that when I saw him" sometime late on July 20 or early July 21, said Zamora, who was serving a 12-day sentence for various warrants.

Zamora said Gonzales complained of chest pain and seemed delirious while asking cellmates to buy him ice cream and beer and help find his bicycle. After ignoring the inmates for some time, Zamora said, jailers entered the cell and forcibly removed Gonzales. When inmates asked where he was going, the jailers responded, "We're putting him in the (restraint) chair because he's acting up," Zamora said.

Pasadena police have confirmed that the jail has a restraint chair, but officials have declined to say whether Gonzales was placed in it. About an hour after he was taken away, jailers put Gonzales back in the same cell, Zamora said.

After sleeping, Zamora woke to learn that paramedics seen walking through the jail were there because Gonzales had died overnight in a different cell.

Corbett said Gonzales was released from the jail about 1 a.m. on July 21, after completing his sentence for a July 18 public intoxication arrest.

Inmates interviewed said they think Gonzales had begun to ask for medical help sometime late on Friday, July 20. Zamora thinks Gonzales was removed from his cell that Friday night, returned an hour later and removed again after Zamora fell asleep.

Police said Gonzales was arrested again about 2 a.m. July 21 outside an auto mechanic's garage in the 1300 block of East Harris, about one-quarter of a mile from the jail. Police said Gonzales' eyes were bloodshot and his speech "extremely slurred" when he resisted arrest.

"We administered several knee strikes and elbow strikes to Pete's back and thighs and ordered him to stop resisting," Jones wrote in the incident report.

Greg Cagle, the officers' attorney, said they did not know that he had been released from the jail one hour before they found him in the bed of a pickup outside the business.

Police said the officers did not capture video of the arrest from their patrol car because they did not activate their emergency lights. They also did not use Tasers to subdue Gonzales.

"The man I saw in jail, he's not someone who could hurt a cop," Zamora said. "He's someone you would want to help."

What the autopsy showed

About four hours after Gonzales was reported dead, police arrived at his mother's home and told the family that he may have had a stroke or heart attack in the jail. An autopsy the next day, July 22, revealed the broken ribs and punctured lung.

On July 23, Pasadena Sgt. Josh Bruegger filed a Custodial Death Report with the Texas Attorney General's Office.

"It should be noted that due to the decased's [sic] age, poor nutrition, and alcoholism, he was more susceptible to broken bones, including ribs," the report says, noting that eight of Gonzales' ribs were fractured in 11 places.

Bruegger later filed an affidavit objecting to the release of the autopsy report to the Houston media.

Also on July 23, in a press release, police said Gonzales had suffered injuries from falling as Buckaloo and Jones escorted him to a patrol car.

Police have declined to release video from inside the jail. Also, Zamora's other cellmate, 18-year-old Daniel Gonzales (not related), has declined interview requests.

Daniel Gonzales' family has said his release three days after Pedro Gonzales' death was a surprise because the teen still owed hundreds of dollars in fines for curfew warrants.

Court records for Daniel Gonzales were not included in documents the city of Pasadena provided for this story. Police confirmed that he was in the jail on July 21, but officials would not discuss his release.

...

LAST FOUR DAYS

A look at the events leading up to Pedro Gonzales Jr.’s death:

Wednesday, July 18

Pedro Gonzales Jr. jailed for public intoxication arrest.

Friday, July 20 10 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.: Inmates Joshua Zamora and Patrick Beaudoin say inmates beg jailers to get Gonzales medical attention before he is removed from a shared cell. Inmates Kimberley Hampton and Sarahi Claudette Sierra hear yelling from men's jail cells. Jailers allegedly tell inmates Gonzales would be placed in restraint chair because he was "acting up."

Saturday, July 21

12 a.m.: Zamora says Gonzales returns to his cell.

12 a.m. to 1 a.m.: Zamora says he thinks Gonzales is removed from the cell a second time after Zamora falls asleep.

1 a.m.: Police say Gonzales is released from jail.

2 a.m.: Police say two Pasadena officers arrest Gonzales at 1309 E. Harris.

2:08 a.m.: Evelyn Moreno calls 911 to report that officers are beating a man at 1309 E. Harris.

2 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.: Hampton says a jailer tells Gonzales to "shut up" as he is hunched over in a holding cell.

2:30 a.m. to 3 a.m.: Police say Gonzales collapses in jail and paramedics treat him for minor injuries. Police say he refuses to go to hospital.

3 a.m. to 4 a.m.: Sometime after 3 a.m., Jessica Salazar says jailers tell her to mind her own business when she notices Gonzales looks pale while lying in the holding cell.

6:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.: Gonzales is found dead in the holding cell.

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