Inmate died after 7 days without water, prosecutors allege

Video from Milwaukee jail shows guard shutting the tap

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee prosecutors weighing criminal charges for an inmate’s dehydration death said Tuesday that the jail’s commander failed to inform police about the existence of surveillance video showing a guard shutting off water to the cell and never turning it back on.

The assertion came during the second day of a weeklong inquest by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office to determine whether jail staff should be charged in the April 24, 2016, death of 38-year-old Terrill Thomas. He was alone in his cell for seven days without water, prosecutors say, before dying of what the medical examiner termed “profound dehydration.”

A current and a former jail captain both testified Tuesday that the video showed a guard turning off water to the cell on April 17, shortly before Thomas was transferred there after he stuffed a mattress in a toilet to flood the cell he was previously in.

Capt. George Gold testified that his jail commander, Nancy Lee Evans, directed him to review the video the day after Thomas died and report to her what he saw. Gold said after the guard turned off the water he didn’t see anyone turn it back on.

“They lock him up and then they never let him out until they take him out dead, correct?” Assistant District Attorney Kurt Bentley asked Gold, who agreed.

Thomas’s family has said he was having a mental breakdown when police arrested him on April 14, 2016, for shooting a man in front of his parents’ house and later firing a gun inside a casino.

Gold said Evans “was very surprised” to hear what the video showed. But when Evans took the stand later Tuesday, she denied Gold ever told her about the water being shut off and said it was several months before she became aware that dehydration was the cause of Thomas’s death. She denied withholding evidence, but Bentley said Evans failed to direct staff to preserve the entire video and did not mention it to police until almost a year later.

A jury hearing the evidence will recommend whether prosecutors should file charges, but the decision will be up to the District Attorney’s Office.