Man dies in jail after taking trip to resolve outstanding DUI warrant

The call came out of nowhere one April day last year: Everett Palmer Jr. was dead.

The 41yearold father of two had traveled from his home in Delaware to Lancaster County, Pa., on April 7 to resolve an outstanding DUI warrant from 2016, his family told The Washington Post on Thursday. But days later, his family received a call that he had died at York County Prison on April 9.

An autopsy report from the York County Coroner states that Palmer had become agitated in his cell, banging his head against his cell door, and was restrained. He was then moved to a hospital, where he was declared dead. But his family still knows little about the events that precipitated his death.

There was “so much mystery and unanswered questions in a way that violates every policy and procedure the state has,” said civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who is now representing the family.

A year later, Palmer’s family still has questions about what happened and is pursuing both criminal and civil cases.

The Pennsylvania State Police York Station is conducting an investigation in conjunction with the York County district attorney, according to PSP spokesman Brent Miller. Both offices declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the case.

Dwayne Palmer said his brother went to Pennsylvania to clear up a DUI warrant from Lancaster County before traveling to New York to see his sick mother. The York Daily Record reported that Everett Palmer had been involved in a singlevehicle crash on Oct. 28, 2016, and that emergency responders had smelled alcohol on him. A test revealed a blood alcohol content of 0.148, above the legal limit of 0.08. He was flown to York Hospital, the Record reported.

When Everett Palmer arrived in Pennsylvania in 2018 to resolve the DUI, police saw a suspension on his license and he was sent to York County Prison, Dwayne Palmer said.

After that, what happened to Everett Palmer is not clearly known.

According to the York County coroner’s report and autopsy results, Palmer was being held in a single cell at York County Prison on April 9, 2018, when he “became agitated and began hitting his head against the inside of his cell door.” Officers “restrained” Palmer, but after the incident he was taken to the prison’s clinic and was “noted to be unresponsive.”

Staff tried to resuscitate Palmer, and he was transferred to York Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:46 a.m.

The coroner’s office ruled his official cause of death as “complication following an excited state, associated with methamphetamine toxicity, during physical restraint.” A sicklecell disorder was said to be a probable contributing factor. The manner of death was undetermined.

The autopsy was conducted by an independent firm called Forensic Pathology Associates that is contracted with the county, York County coroner Pamela Gay told The Washington Post on Saturday.

Gay said that Palmer was banging his head in his cell before his death and that the result for methamphetamine toxicity would appear if there was “methamphetamine in their system that was sufficient enough that it could have contributed to the death.” She said the question of how he could have obtained such a substance in custody was under investigation.

Lee Merritt, the Palmer family lawyer, told The Washington Post that the family had been shocked to receive Everett Palmer’s body with his heart, brain and throat missing, and that it was not immediately communicated to them where the body parts were. The family’s distress over the missing body parts was detailed in a NY1 investigation into Palmer’s death and reiterated to The Post.

The family hired an independent pathologist, who first flagged the missing organs and later said the manner of death should be considered a homicide, Merritt said. Merritt claimed that the coroner’s office initially denied removing the organs before later acknowledging they had done so, and only several months later did they say that a “private company” had them.

Gay disputes that timeline in a statement issued Friday in which she asserted her office had cooperated with the family and their lawyer at the time and the body parts were located. She told The Post that, as a part of the autopsy, Palmer’s brain, heart and throat were removed and remained with Forensic Pathology Associates for testing. She said that it was not uncommon for those organs to be removed and kept by a lab, and the body parts remained with FPA because the investigation was still underway.

She said her office did not know Forensic Pathology Associates had retained some of Palmer’s body parts until the family’s lawyer made contact.