Man dies in Hampton Roads Regional Jail 2 days after filing emergency grievance begging for help

By Gary A. Harki | The Virginian-Pilot | August 31, 2016 6:00 PM

PORTSMOUTH

Inside the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, Henry Clay Stewart knew he was sick.

He’d filled out grievance after grievance asking for help, a fellow inmate said.

A 60-year-old man incarcerated for violating probation on a shoplifting charge, Stewart was vomiting blood. He was unable to eat much of anything for weeks, said Brent Lashley, who was two cells away from Stewart.

“I have blacked out two times in less than 24 hours,” Stewart wrote Aug. 4 in imperfect English on an emergency grievance form obtained by his family after his death. “I keep asking to go to the emergency room. … I can’t hold water down or food.”

Two days later, he was dead. Stewart died 353 days after the death of Jamycheal Mitchell in the same jail.

Mitchell was arrested in April 2015 after being accused of stealing about $5 worth of snacks from a convenience store in Portsmouth. He died about three months later, alone in a Hampton Roads Regional Jail cell with feces on the walls and urine on the floor.

Several inmates have since claimed that Mitchell was abused by guards, an accusation the jail denies.

Jail spokeswoman Officer N. Perry said she could not talk about Stewart’s death because of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. She said the grievance form obtained by the family was examined by the jail’s health care staff.

Portsmouth police are investigating Stewart’s death, as they do all “out of hospital” deaths, Capt. Scott Burke said.

Stewart’s family questioned whether he got the medical care he needed. They also wondered whether Stewart would still be alive had state or local officials done a more thorough investigation into Mitchell’s death.

They said a doctor in the state Medical Examiner’s Office told them Stewart had a ruptured ulcer in his stomach. An official in the office said Wednesday that they have yet to determine a cause or manner of death.

Jail Superintendent David Simons and jail board chairman Curtis Edmonds, also a Portsmouth city councilman, did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday.

“The system failed again,” said Stewart’s sister, Michelle Wilson. “They failed again, and it’s going to happen again and again and again. And all I’m asking is somebody to hear me out. I just want someone to step in and do something. … The system needs to be fixed.”

Stewart was arrested May 9 and was initially incarcerated in the Hampton jail. He was transferred to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth on June 7, Wilson said.

In May and June, Stewart and Wilson exchanged letters frequently. Their mother has terminal lung cancer, and Stewart’s son, Joe Austin, was about to get married.

In July, Stewart’s letters stopped, Wilson said.

“I’d go to the mailbox every day looking for a letter,” she said. “I knew something was wrong.”

Inside the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, Stewart couldn’t eat solid foods and was frequently vomiting blood. Fellow inmates tried to help him. He was the “senior gentleman” on his cell block, Lashley said in an interview Wednesday.

Stewart had a mass on his neck but did not seem sick, Wilson said.

But in jail, he started to lose weight, unable to eat the harder food, such as fresh vegetables, because he had no teeth. Stewart told Lashley at one point that he’d lost at least 16 pounds since being incarcerated.

What he did eat was often vomited up, along with blood. It happened one day when Lashley gave him a snack bar.

Lashley told Stewart, “I’m not a doctor, but it looks like you’re bleeding internally.”

Stewart often filed emergency grievance forms about his health, which inmates are required to do first on paper, then at a computer kiosk. At one point, he apparently saw a doctor for the growth on his neck.

Guards would get on Stewart’s case for filing so many grievance forms, Lashley said.

“I understand the need for discipline in jail, for order and punishment,” he said. “But for them to treat him the way they did was inhumane. It was sad to watch.”

On Aug. 4, Stewart looked disoriented as he began to climb stairs to the upper portion of his cell block.

As Stewart climbed, Lashley said, he swooned and fell back, hitting his head on the ground.

A nurse told him to get in line and she’d give him a pain pill. Guards and the nurse stepped over him, Lashley said.

“It was like he was a puddle of mud or something,” said Lashley, who, with another inmate, helped Stewart to his cell. “He went into his cell and immediately vomited again, fresh blood.”

Stewart told Lashley, “I feel like I’m dying.”

That same day, he filled out the grievance form that would eventually be obtained by his family.

On the bottom, dated Aug. 4, is a signature by a Sgt. Whitehead. The Virginian-Pilot requested to speak to Whitehead through the Hampton Roads Regional Jail on Wednesday but did not get a response.

Perry said a member of the medical staff responded on the form, which was then given back to Stewart by Whitehead.

“Mr. Stewart, not only have you been refusing your seizure medication, but … you were witnessed walking to the top tier and sitting on walkway. You’ve also been further evaluated off site by specialists. In addition you will receive a follow-up by the provider,” the nurse wrote on the grievance under the heading “Determined not to be an emergency – Reason and action taken.”

Lashley said Stewart gave him a phone number to contact his family that day.

“He said, ‘Take this number down and let my sister know what happened,’ ” Lashley recalls. “I said, ‘You’re not going to die. Eat food and you’ll be all right.’ Two days later, he was dead.”

Stewart had had seizures since he was younger, Wilson said, and had cirrhosis of the liver. If he went a long time without drinking, she said, he would have a seizure.

By the time Lashley got out of jail and called the family, Wilson and Stewart’s mother, Martha Graves, already had the letter, which was found among the possessions picked up by Stewart’s son from the jail.

The two women believe someone inside the jail was fed up with how inmates were being treated and wanted them to see the grievance.

They have requested audio, documents and video of Stewart from the jail. The request, except for medical records, has been denied.

“Who knows how many have died in there and they got away with it,” Graves said.

Wilson said she has heard from several inmates who say her brother was treated poorly in the jail and officers did nothing for him when he told guards he could not breathe, coughed blood and foamed at the mouth.

“They could have helped my brother. They could have saved my brother,” Wilson said. “I want justice. I don’t want it to happen to another family.”

Someone needs to investigate her brother’s death, she said. Wilson believes someone in the jail tucked the grievance form in his possessions to help her get justice.

The family has retained Mark Krudys, the lawyer who is suing the jail on behalf of the Mitchell family.

“I don’t know who cleaned out his pod that day,” Wilson said. “I don’t know if it was another inmate, I don’t know if it was a CO, but I believe they put it in that bag because I needed to see this. They put it right in my face, and whoever did it, I appreciate it. Because otherwise we never would have known.”

Gary A. Harki, 757-446-2370, gary.harki@pilotonline.com Follow @GaryAHarki on Twitter.

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