The family of a 27-year-old man with severe mental disabilities who died while experiencing epileptic seizures in the Mesa County jail settled a lawsuit for $2 million, their attorney announced Monday.
Tomas Beauford died April 16, 2014, in a Mesa County jail cell after a series of seizures, which deputies and nurses from the health care company ignored, his family’s lawsuit, filed in 2016, states.
Jail staff failed to medicate Beauford, confiscated a bracelet that helped him manage seizures and did not intervene in a series of seizures he experienced the night he died, according to the lawsuit.
“Rather than providing him with the medical attention and treatment he so desperately needed, Mr. Beauford was actively ignored,” the lawsuit states.
Beauford had a severe developmental disability that meant he operated with the mental capacity of a 6-year-old, according to the lawsuit.
Beauford was booked into the jail on March 1, 2014, after he was charged with misdemeanor assault in connection to a disturbance at the Grand Junction Regional Center, a group home for adults with severe mental disabilities. He indicated on a jail intake form that he had seizures and had mental health needs.
Deputies at the Mesa County jail confiscated a bracelet that helped manage Beauford’s seizures and failed to force him to take his needed medications, despite the fact that he suffered multiple seizures during a three-day stay in the jail five months earlier.
For hours on the night of April 15, deputies tasked with checking on Beauford failed to intervene as he suffered a series of seizures, the lawsuit states. Sometimes the deputies did not even enter his cell after noticing him seizing in his bed.
Epilepsy is rarely fatal when treated appropriately, but jail deputies were not properly trained on how to care for someone with the disorder, the lawsuit states.
A deputy found Beauford dead in his cell just after midnight.
Mesa County agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle the suit and the private firm Correctional Healthcare Companies, which contracted to provide health services at the jail, agreed to pay $400,025.
“Tomas’s family hopes that this settlement will send a message to jails everywhere that they must treat disabled inmates as human beings,” said David Lane, the family’s attorney.
“Beautiful is how you make others feel when you are present,” Beauford’s mother, Tiffany Marsh, said in her eulogy for her son. “Beautiful is your essence, your heart and soul. You light up my life. You are the light of my life. I will miss you so much.”
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