Witness: Joking Marshals Ignored Final Pleas

Ish Brown watched and then listened from her cell in the lock-up as her friend desperately yelled for help — and the state marshals in charge kept hooting about her ​“ass crack” and other body parts.

Ten or so minutes later, Brown said, those same marshals ran back and forth in an effort to save the friend’s life. They failed. She never regained consciousness; four nights later, with her husband holding her hand, hospital aides disconnected the tubes keeping her alive.

Officials called it suicide.

Ish Brown and Lee Hayes, the dead woman’s husband, argue the marshals could have done more to prevent it. They could have brought her the medicine she called for. They could have paid more attention to her obviously dangerous condition. Instead they cruelly and incompetently failed in their duties, Brown and Hayes said in interviews with the Independent.

Now both the New Haven police and the state Judicial Branch are investigating to see what exactly happened. The Judicial Branch runs the lock-up; city cops assist.

“Something’s not right here,” said Lee Hayes. ​“I think they killed my wife.”

“They should haven’t put her back there [in a solitary cell] by herself, not in that condition,” Brown said. ​“If they had checked on her when she called out, they could have saved her. They should have checked on her when she cried out three times. They stayed in the front room and made jokes.”

The incident took place around 10:15 p.m. on Monday of last week in the detention facility in the basement of police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.

Police Chief Dean Esserman said today that he has ​“no comment pending the investigation that I ordered that evening in conjunction with the state’s own investigation.”

O’Donovan Murphy, director of Judicial Marshal Services for the state, said he hadn’t heard any of the witness’s or husband’s allegations. At first glance it appears his marshals did everything right, he said.

“From everything I’ve seen so far and what I’ve been given, I believe that during a very short period of time they made their rounds according to policy and procedure, and they gave her immediate medical attention once they found her,” Murphy said. ​“It was continuous. It was in excess of what I believe will be 17 minutes once I get the timelines.”

“Crackhead!”

How the woman, who was 44 years old and from New Haven, ended up in jail, or the trouble she gave cops and marshals, does not appear to be in dispute. (The Independent is not naming her because of the official determination that she committed suicide.)

Police arrested the woman around 9 p.m. She was involved in a fight on Whalley Avenue, according to city mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton. The woman allegedly bit Officer Joseph Staffiere during the arrest, caused Officer Raul Periera to pull a muscle in his leg, and kicked out a window, Benton said.

Husband Hayes does not criticize the police. He said his wife ​“was struggling with some demons” connected with substance abuse. ​“I’m not concerned with the arrest. If she was being combative with the police officers, she should have been arrested.” Hayes said he and his wife had been together 23 years. They had lived apart the past two years while her life skidded but they remained close and very much in each other’s lives, he said.

Police brought the woman into the lock-up around 9:45 p.m. Ish Brown (Ish is her nickname; she asked that her legal first name not be used in an article) was already there, in cell B52, arrested on an assault and risk of injury warrant. (She was released the next day on a promise to appear in court later this month.) The cell is near the front room where the marshals do intake, Brown said. She said she could hear everything said. A struggle clearly was taking place, a fact confirmed by the state Judicial Branch.

“She threw up all over my shoes!” Brown quoted one marshal as saying. Another called the woman a ​“crackhead,” according to Brown.

“I’m not no motherfucking crackhead. Your mother’s a crackhead! Take them cuffs off me,” she quoted the woman as responding.

“Pull my pants up,” the woman requested.

The response: ​“You give us time, we’ll pull your pants up.”

“Can I get my medicine?” the woman asked next, according to Brown. According to husband Hayes, the woman had left the hospital a week and a half earlier after being treated for meningitis.

The marshal doing intake marked the woman down as drunk. He marked ​“no” on the other questions on the checklist, such as: Was she suicidal? Depressed? At risk of hurting herself?

Then four or five marshals walked right past Brown’s cell, carrying the woman, with difficulty, Brown said. ​“She was barely walking.”

That’s when Brown saw who the woman was — an old friend with whom she remained in contact. She called out her friend’s name. No response. She called it out again. Again no response.

The marshals passed the three occupied cells, each of which have two metal beds (no mattresses); passed empty cells; and deposited the woman around a bend in the section farthest away, in cell A20, said Brown, who was familiar with the lock-up from previous arrests. Brown could then hear a new struggle.

“You could hear her then say she can’t get up. They had to help her on to the bottom bunk,” Brown said, who quoted one of the marshals saying, ​“If you would help us to get you up, you would be up.”

They locked the gate and walked away as the woman made a request, according to Brown: ​“Can I get my medicine please?”

(Policy allows marshals to give verified prescription medicine to an inmate at the lock-up unless the person is drunk as this woman was, according to Judicial Branch supervisor Murphy. If the person’s drunk, the marshals will send the medication over to a hospital. He said he hadn’t heard of the woman in this case having medication.)

It was 10:01 p.m., according to the Judicial Branch.

The marshals returned to the lounge/ admittance area at the front of the lock-up, according to Brown. They kept the door open, Brown said. Here’s what she heard, she said:

“Do you see how big she is? Her ass crack is so big that you can go trout fishing in it!”

“Her front is as big as her back.”

“Her pussy probably had cottage cheese. The bitch threw up all over my shoes!”

Meanwhile, from the back of the lock-up, Brown said, she heard the woman screaming for help.

“Did you hear her? That’s her,” a marshal said, as the jokes resumed, according to Brown.

The woman yelled for 30 seconds, according to Brown. A minute or two of silence ensued. Then she resumed, according to Brown: ​“Can I get my medicine please!” And a general, wordless yell.

Then she stopped. All was silent. For around 10 minutes.

13 Minutes, No Revival

The marshals are required to make rounds and check on each prisoner at least once every 15 minutes, according to Judicial Branch supervisor Murphy. He said a marshal did that within 10 minutes or so. He discovered the woman trying to hang herself with a jacket sleeve wrapped around the cell’s bars, according to Murphy.

She was unconscious.

He rushed back to get help from two marshals, then two more. They tried to revive her.

Video cameras captured some of the events that unfolded next, according to Murphy. He said the department is still ​“burning” some of the video and reviewing it.

At 10:14 p.m., he said, ​“we can see them trying to get her out of the cell.”

“They spent a long time trying to revive her at the lock-upl] before EMS [Emergency Medical Services] showed up in excess of 13 minutes. Even after EMS arrived they continued working with her along with EMS. “

A Forehead Kiss

She was brought to Yale-New Haven Hospital’s intensive care unit. She was put on a breathing apparatus. She never regained consciousness.

At 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, Lee Hayes (pictured) was worried about his wife. He heard she’d been arrested. He called the lock-up.

The person answering the phone told him she was ​“still being processed,” Hayes said. Hayes said he found that odd; he expected she would be in court that morning.

The person giving Hayes the information was probably following the rules, said Murphy: ​“The protocol is to say she’s not processed. They’re looking at someone on the board saying ​‘in the hospital.’ I don’t think it was intentional to hide information. They probably didn’t have any more information beyond that. She was not processed.”

Hayes subsequently found out from a family member that in fact the woman was at the hospital since the night before. He joined relatives at the hospital who stayed there off and on during the week. Brown arrived, too, after being released from custody. The doctors let them know there was little chance the woman would revive.

Husband Hayes said his wife had no marks on her neck when he later saw her at the hospital. ​“I have seen people tie stuff on their neck and not have marks,” Murphy later responded. An autopsy by state Associate Medical Examiner Ira Kanfer subsequently confirmed the official cause of death as suicide by hanging.

On Friday some 40 people took turns saying good-bye to woman, according to Hayes. He said he was in the room Friday night when the tubes were removed and machine turned off. He held her hand. He kissed her forehead.

A chapter had closed. The book on what happened remains open.