HARRISBURG – The mother of a Dauphin County Prison inmate who died while in custody in 2021 - after allegedly being doused with pepper spray, constrained by his wrists and ankles and having a hood placed over his head - has settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the county, the prison and a health care company for $5 million.
Joyce Thompson (as Administratrix of the Estate of Ishmail Thompson, deceased) first filed suit in the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas on Dec. 7, 2022 versus Dauphin County, Dauphin County Prison and PrimeCare Medical, Inc., all of Harrisburg.
Ishmail Thompson, 29, had been arrested on July 23, 2021 for charges of trespassing, simple assault, lewdness and harassment, Lower Swatara Township Police said, when he began exhibiting showing signs of a mental health episode at a Comfort Inn in Middletown.
After police took Ishmail into custody, they noted “his mannerisms” and communicated that he had “a mental health issue”, after he removed all of his clothes while inside a holding cell.
Corrections officers later led Ishmail to a shower area, but five seconds after turning on the water, the officers sprayed him with pepper spray, wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed and shackled him, and placed a “spit hood”, a fabric hood used to prevent a suspect from spitting or biting, over his head.
The corrections officers then struck Ishmail repeatedly in the stomach and legs while he lay on the ground, and according to the suit, body camera footage confirmed that Thompson “never threatened the officers, nor became physically violent prior to this unprovoked attack.”
Though Ishmail asked for water and pleaded that he couldn’t breathe, his pleas were ignored and he was placed in a restraint chair. Though a nurse came to see him, she only conducted a cursory, one-minute examination. According to the suit, the nurse never spoke with Ishmail, never took his blood pressure and measured his temperature through the hood.
Within 15 minutes after being placed in the restraint chair, Ishmail was found unresponsive and in cardiac arrest. Doctors later diagnosed him with a severe anoxic brain injury, which caused an irreversible coma.
On July 29, 2021, six days after his arrest, Ishmail died.
His death was initially reported as a “medical event”, leading Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo to decline pressing criminal charges against of the corrections officers involved in the incident.
Plaintiff counsel asserted that the defendants undertook these tactics against Ishmail, despite two prior inmates dying in custody under similar circumstances, one in 2011 and the other in 2019.
“Dauphin County Prison and PrimeCare Medical ignored Mr. Thompson’s pleas for help. Had they listened, Mr. Thompson would be alive,” plaintiff counsel Shanin Specter and Philip M. Pasquarello, said in a statement.
Plaintiff counsel had filed a praecipe asking the matter be marked as settled, discontinued and ended, on Nov. 21.
Dauphin County Prison will pay $4.25 million of the settlement and the remaining $750,000 will be paid by PrimeCare Medical, which contracted with the prison, but provided sub-standard medical attention to Ishmail.
In exchange for receiving the settlement amount, the plaintiff is barred from suing the defendants in the future, the defendants denied any wrongdoing in Ishmail’s death and the plaintiff must return or destroy all body camera and surveillance footage detailing the incident.
The plaintiff was represented by Shanin Specter and Philip M. Pasquarello of Kline & Specter, in Philadelphia.
The defendants were represented by Frank J. Lavery Jr. and Murray J. Weed of Lavery Law in Harrisburg, plus John R. Ninosky of Marshall Dennehey, in Camp Hill.
Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas case 2022-CV-09297
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com