Samuel Lawrence was a Fulton County inmate who suffered from violence and neglect at the hands of the jail in his seven months there.
A federal lawsuit filed on his behalf alleges he received regular beatings from inmates and guards and was also denied access to food and medical treatment, according to a recent federal lawsuit.
At times, he was suicidal.
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” Lawrence, 34, wrote in his Aug. 22 complaint. “I’m starving, I’m thirsty.”
Lawrence was found unresponsive in his cell during dinner rounds on Saturday, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office confirmed. He was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia where he was pronounced dead, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
He is the fifth inmate to die in the jail in August.
Days before he died, he filed his civil rights complaint against the jail, its deputies, and other staff. The document, containing roughly a dozen handwritten pages, detailed the destitute conditions he said he faced in Fulton jail. He wrote from an isolation cell where he said he slept on the “hard metal floor” and was without water or a working toilet.
“I would like to file a temporary restraining order and request a transfer due to ongoing physical torture, brutality from guards and inmates, and neglect,” Lawrence wrote.
The jail has been riddled with trouble and scrutiny. On Thursday, one detainee was killed and two were injured in a series of stabbings at the jail, the ninth inmate to die in the custody of the sheriff’s office this year.
Labat’s office hasn’t directly answered questions about the allegations in Lawrence’s lawsuit or his death.
“We cannot comment on pending litigation,” Natalie Ammons, a spokesperson in Labat’s office said about Lawrence’s death. “In addition, it is an active investigation.
Lawrence was arrested the day after Christmas for 2nd Degree Arson, jail records indicate. But 200 days later, he had still not been formally charged. His bond was $30,000, and he was scheduled for a bond reduction hearing in less than a month.
In his federal complaint, Lawrence described the violence he experienced at the jail.
He claimed he was often targeted by other inmates and said guards did little to protect him. He detailed one incident in May where a guard watched as another inmate chased him around his dorm and beat him, leaving him with bruised ribs.
In another incident earlier this month, Lawrence described how guards failed to protect him when inmates forced him to fight, recalling how one inmate choked him, and another bit his hand and chest “like an animal.”
At times Lawerence refused to go back to his cell out of fear of other inmates. Guards would resort to violence to force him to comply, he said. He wrote that, in June, Fulton deputies “used excessive force by kicking me in the head, stomping my hands while in handcuffs and wrongfully pepper spraying,” when he refused to go back to his dorm where he had been extorted by other inmates with a shank in a previous incident.
He also claims he was frequently denied medical assistance, and the neglect and abuse worsened his mental health disorders.
The Atlanta Police Department is investigating his death, and the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office is performing an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.
More than 60 Fulton inmates died between 2009 and 2022, the highest total for any jail in Georgia during that time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.
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