David Stojcevski, 32, was sent to jail for 30 days in June 2014 when he couldn’t pay a $772 fine on a careless driving ticket and obstruction of justice charge, CBS reports.
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In the months prior to his incarceration, Stojcevski had reportedly been prescribed three medications to treat his withdrawal from a Heroin addiction: Xanax and Klonopin for anxiety and oxycodone for pain relief. However, the suit claims, the drugs were never given to Stojcevski, even when he was found “twitching on the floor” and asked for treatment.
In March, David Stojcevski’s brother Vladimir filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Sheriff Anthony Wickersham, 16 of his deputies, prison health care provider Correct Care Solutions, and several mental health workers.
The lawsuit accuses Macomb County officials and jail employees of failing to respond to David Stojcevski’s “excruciating pain and misery” linked to drug withdrawal.
At the jail a nurse evaluated him and recommended Stojcevski go to a medical drug detox unit – he went to a jail cell instead, the station reported.
But that it happened in jail – under 24-hour video surveillance and the eyes of more than a dozen corrections officers and medical staff – “shocks the conscience”, Robert Ihrie, an attorney in the lawsuit over Stojcevski’s death, told the Detroit Free Press.
Macomb County’s Corporation Counsel John Schapka said that from what he’s learned about the case, he’s “confident the county will prevail”.
“The various defendants with malice, recklessness and callous indifference failed to provide or obtain care and treatment necessary to save David’s life”, the lawsuit says.
“Vladimir suffered physical and mental injury, great indignity, embarrassment and ridicule within the Macomb County Jail from inmates as well as defendants’ employees and agents”, the lawsuit says. It seeks more than $75,000 in damages.
A video taken from the jail, which shows a naked Stojcevski during his final days in jail, is being used as evidence.
The 11 days of footage showed the Roseville, Michigan, man in a high-observation cell behaving erratically, exhibiting extreme weight loss – he lost 50 pounds during that stretch – and convulsing on the cement floor during his final two days of life. The cause of death was ruled “acute withdrawal from medications”.
“Like an animal, he’s crawling underneath something to die”, addiction expert Diane Rockwell commented to WDIV as she watched the surveillance video scene of Stojcevski struggling to get under the bed. One guard is seen on tape attempting CPR before transferring Stojcevski to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. He claims that he was similarly mistreated in the jail and only taken to a hospital after repeated seizures, and bouts of vomiting and incontinence that soiled his clothes for days.
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In August, six inmates in the mental health section of the jail filed a hand-written federal lawsuit alleging that “conditions within the jail, and within the mental health ward in particular, [fail] to ensure the protection of inmates civil and/or constitutional rights”.
