Fabian Avery III weighed 153 pounds when he was transferred from the Fulton County jail in late February 2011 to alleviate overcrowding.
The 17-year-old was found dead nearly a month later in an isolation cell at the Mize Street Municipal jail in the south Georgia town of Pelham, his 6-foot-1-inch frame shriveled to 108 pounds, according to reports.
On Thursday, Avery's mother, Sandrini Scott, sued the City of Pelham and the city's police department in federal court claiming wrongful death and civil rights violations, and naming Police Chief Nealie McCormick, city manager Doug Westberry, the jail's nurse and doctor, and four correctional officers as defendants.
Avery died of appendicitis and complications from a bowel obstruction, according to investigative documents compiled by the GBI.
He had been arrested in December 2010 on armed robbery charges and was transferred to Pelham on Feb. 15, 2011.
The complaint claims that Avery first reported being ill on Feb. 24, 2011 and was given minimal attention.
While he complained of nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and lower back pains, as well as frequently vomiting and defecating on himself, the lawsuit claims jail staff did little to help get Avery the necessary care.
"In the face of Avery's obvious pain, deteriorating condition and pleas for help from Fabian himself, from his family and from other inmates, the medical, supervisory and correctional staff at the Mize Street Detention Center stood by and was deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs," the lawsuit reads.
"This inaction was due, in substantial part, to deficient policies of the City of Pelham and the Pelham Police Department, which failed to provide sufficient, qualified medical staff and failed to train their non-medical staff to recognize and respond to serious medical conditions."
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, Pelham Police Chief McCormick declined to comment, saying he was unaware of the lawsuit and referring any questions to city attorney Philip Savrin.
"This is an unfortunate case," Savrin said from his Atlanta office. "If [the jail staff] had any indication that he needed any more medication, it would have been provided."
Avery was found unresponsive on his mattress on the floor of the roughly 6-by-10-foot isolation cell he had been placed in in the early hours of March 18, 2011.
The GBI was called in to conduct an autopsy and to investigate his death, interviewing the jail physician, Dr. Roland M. Brown, the nurse, Mary L. Kincaid, and a host of jail staff and inmates.
Reports from the investigation reveal that Avery reported being ill about Feb. 24 and had been placed in the isolation cell, called "the hole," because he began frequently soiling himself and not cleaning up or showering.
According to the GBI report, Kincaid suggested that Avery might have been faking some of his symptoms, noting that he would not produce a urine sample when asked and that she caught him on one occasion sticking his finger in his mouth to force himself to vomit.
"Kincaid stated that when she had questioned Avery in the past about soiling himself and why [he] did not get up to use the bathroom, Avery told Kincaid that he did not want to get up to use the bathroom," the report reads. "Kincaid said that Avery said he was scared to be sent to the prison system."
During his 30 days at the Pelham jail, Dr. Thomas Lincoln, an independent medical doctor contracted by Scott's attorney Jay Hirsch to provide an expert opinion to include with the lawsuit, claims the staff ignored Avery as he became sicker.
"Yet, they did not do anything to improve Fabian Avery's condition," Lincoln said in his report — created from reading the GBI report and autopsy, Avery's Fulton County jail and juvenile detention health reports, and Pelham reports on Avery. "Clearly, Fabian Avery was in persistent pain and needed qualified, reasonable medical attention in a hospital."
Savrin represents all of the defendants except for Dr. Brown, who was not a city employee and only visited the jail twice a week.
"The question is going to be, did [the jail staff] get him medical attention, and did they follow the doctor's advice?" Savrin said. "The answer is yes they did."
Hirsch said that although the Fulton County jail and its staff aren't named in the lawsuit, there is still a chance that the agency and its leaders also could be held culpable to some degree for Avery's death.
"They exposed him to Pelham," Hirsch said.
The Fulton County Sheriff's Office runs the jail and outsources housing of some of its inmates to other jail facilities across the state to satisfy a federal mandate to alleviate overcrowding.
Sheriff's office spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan said Fulton no longer houses inmates at Pelham, but declined to say whether Avery's death predicated an end to Fulton's agreement with Pelham.
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