Father vows court fight over daughter’s death
‘She deserved to be treated like a human being,’ he says
SERVILLETA — “If someone treated a dog the way they treated my daughter, they’d be arrested,” said Antonio DeVargas of Servilleta.
DeVargas took time recently to reflect on the life of his 34-year-old daughter, who died on Nov. 9 after a bout of meningitis. Her illness surfaced while she was a prisoner at the Santa Fe County jail.
He mourned her drug addiction and the bad decisions she made, her ill treatment at the hands of the father of her two children and what he maintains was cruelty toward her by jail officers.
When Carmela DeVargas began complaining to guards about severe headaches, she was mocked and laughed at, her father said.
After she was given antibiotics, she felt better for a while. But then the headaches came back. “Dad, mark this day on your calendar. I have a high tolerance for pain, but the guards are just laughing at me,” Carmela said to DeVargas in a phone call, he said.
The next time DeVargas saw his daughter, she was in Christus St. Vincent Hospital, paralyzed from the neck down, with two guards in her room and shackles on her legs.
DeVargas said he asked the guards, “What’s wrong with you people? She’s dying. She’s not a flight risk.”
Carmela was transferred to UNM Hospital, where DeVargas said she died after being disconnected from life-support systems of her own volition.
A 72-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran, DeVargas said he has hired attorney Richard Rosenstock to file a lawsuit seeking damages from the county.
County spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said she couldn’t release any information about Carmela’s illness and death because of HIPAA, the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects patient privacy.
Rather than addressing Carmela’s case directly, Hart outlined the county’s policy regarding medical treatment for its inmates, who are given the opportunity to see a nurse or a doctor.
“We strive to provide the necessary treatment and medical treatment for each of our residents,” she said.
Hart said there is no evidence that Carmela’s meningitis, which is a contagious disease, spread to other prisoners.
Carmela had landed in jail for a parole violation. In April 2017, she accepted a plea bargain after a grand jury charged her with evidence tampering and conspiracy, and she was sentenced to 4½ years of supervised probation.
According to a police affidavit, Richard Terwilliger, Carmela’s boyfriend — and her children’s dad — was accused of stealing a safe from a home where he was doing electrical and construction work.
There was $140,000 in the safe, according to the affidavit. In phone calls between Terwilliger and Carmela detailed in the document, Terwilliger accuses her of stealing the money from the stolen safe. She tells him that, in fact, he gave his friends “Tiffany and Vigil a whole bunch of money and that they were now in Durango, Colorado.”
Terwilliger received a suspended sentence and probation in the case, court records show.
Wherever the money from the safe ended up, Antonio DeVargas is sure of one thing: “She (Carmela) never saw a cent. The guy who stole the safe took off for Kentucky. He did the crime. She paid with her life,” he said.
Court records indicate that Terwilliger was given permission to serve probation in Kentucky. But he’s now back in the Santa Fe County jail for a probation violation.
‘She needed a fix’
DeVargas clearly remembers early 2017, when the theft took place, because that was when Carmela gave birth to her daughter Maria via Caesarean section. “She didn’t steal anything, because she was giving birth at the time of the theft,” DeVargas said.
After she began having problems with her C-section incision, she called her father to come get her from the house where she was living. “I took Carmela to the doctor and brought her home with me.” But because he lives too far from a doctor, he said, “I took her back (to her house).”
Shortly after, Carmela was arrested in the safe theft case. “She needed a fix, so she agreed to a plea deal so she could get out of jail,” he said.
During a tear-choked interview, DeVargas painted a picture of a proud New Mexico family, with local roots dating to the 1600s, but one like others that includes a drug addict, in this case with her
children taken away by the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department.
DeVargas himself worked with CYFD to obtain custody of Carmela’s son Andres, 7, when he was four years old and later adopted him, he said. Maria, now 2½, has been adopted by Carmela’s late mother’s second cousin.
“I feel sorry for my baby,” he said of Carmela. “She was a troubled girl.”
In 2015, Carmela was listed as the victim when Terwilliger was indicted in a domestic violence case on charges including two counts of aggravated battery of a household member. That case also resulted in probation for Terwilliger.
DeVargas said Carmela was first exposed to painkillers after being injured as a teenager. “When she was 18, she got involved with a man who was 35 and he hooked her. They found a doctor who would write them prescriptions for anything they wanted. Then he started being abusive to her,” he said.
During her 16-year struggle with drug addiction, Carmela had several opportunities to get her life together, her father recalled. “She got a lot of breaks. She was allowed to get rehab. She was kicked out of three or four facilities,” he said.
Under her plea deal, if Carmela went to live with her father and wore an ankle monitor, she would not have to be incarcerated, DeVargas said. Records show she was repeatedly ordered to attend drug treatment programs.
“But one day, she needed a fix. I begged her, ‘Don’t go.’ But she did,” DeVargas remembered.
It wasn’t long before Carmela was living on the streets, “bouncing around with addicts in Española, Ojo Caliente, Santa Fe,” he said. “Then the inevitable happened. She was arrested again.”
Holding out hope
When she landed back in jail on Sept. 19, Carmela called her father to say she was happy to be off the streets and away from drugs. “I’m going to do good,” she said.
DeVargas still held out hope that his daughter could turn her life around, noting that another daughter has a Ph.D. and works at a university.
Still, he understands the odds weren’t in Carmela’s favor because of her history of addiction and how readily available drugs are in northern New Mexico.
He said he isn’t alone in his community in caring for his grandchildren because of drug problems among parents. “When I go to Andres’ school, there are a lot of other grandparents there,” DeVargas said.
DeVargas said he’s not filing a lawsuit for money, but observed that Andres may need counseling and other help throughout his life. “At times, he’s angry. Other’s times, he’s sad. He has separation anxiety,” he said.
He said the ultimate goal of his suit would be to change the behavior of corrections officers at the Santa Fe County jail.
“They regard prisoners as less than human. They need sensitivity training. My daughter wasn’t an angel, but she deserved to be treated like a human being,” he said.
DeVargas vows that his daughter’s death will not have been in vain. “I can tell you they are not going to forget Carmela or the DeVargas family,” he said.