Lawsuit cites Medina County jailers in inmate’s death
The family of an inmate who died in the Medina County Jail in 2022 is suing the county, alleging guards ignored him while he writhed in agony.
In a federal lawsuit filed last week, the mother and two adult children of David Tumey said he died in a “detox” cell at the jail in Hondo on Feb. 13, 2022, after law officers took him there because he was allegedly behaving erratically.
Tumey, who was 54, was seriously ill, according to the 50page lawsuit filed by Dean Malone, the family’s Dallas-area lawyer. For several days, he lay on a cell floor, likely unable to stand up.
An inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, conducted 10 months after Tumey’s death, found the jail didn’t meet minimum standards, the lawsuit said. The commission determined that Tumey had been in the cell for 68 hours, and that staff failed to reevaluate his condition as it worsened.
Medina County officials could not be reached for comment.
The lawsuit details Tumey’s final hours. It said he ate very little and lay nude on the floor, his limbs jutting out.
He’d likely been dead for more than two hours before a jailer entered his cell at 7:54 p.m. and found his body, according to the lawsuit. Jail staff performed CPR, to no avail.
An autopsy by Dr. Susanna Dana determined Tumey died of complications of methamphetamine intoxication, the suit said.
The Texas Rangers investigated Tumey’s death, but filed no charges in the case. Their reports and recordings have not been fully disclosed to Tumey’s family, according to the lawsuit.
“Written reports regarding David’s death fail to fully depict the story of his final hours,” Malone said. “They are inadequate to communicate the human suffering depicted in video recordings of David’s cell. David was allowed to remain nude, on the cell floor, moving around in apparent distress, for hours and potentially days on end.”
The lawsuit also notes that Malone obtained several reports from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards that showed the Medina jail to be repeatedly out of compliance.
An inspection in 2018 found detainees were allowed to hang blankets and towels on their bunks, obstructing the view from guards. In at least two inspections, jailers were found to have violated time-interval requirements for checking on inmates, sometimes by as much as an hour.
The commission refused to release more recent reports to Malone because Medina County objected, according to the lawsuit.
Similarly, the Texas Rangers’ parent agency, the Texas Department of Public Safety, refused Malone’s public information requests for audio recordings of interviews Rangers conducted during their investigation.
“People should not lose their right to dignity at the jail house door,” Malone said.