30 August 2023
A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against Ramsey County and sheriff’s office correctional officers alleges they failed to report or give treatment to a man who had suffered a “serious and progressively worsening brain hemorrhage” while jailed last year, resulting in his death nearly three weeks later.
The 10-page civil rights lawsuit, filed by attorneys Richard Student and Steve Meshbesher on behalf of Dillon Bakke’s family, alleges the county and four correctional officers violated Bakke’s right to adequate medical treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment.
“It was avoidable,” Student said Tuesday. “Had they done anything, they would have been able to get Dillon medical care, they would have saved his life. Instead, 30 hours goes by without anybody doing anything.”
Bakke’s mother, Teresa Schnell of St. Paul, has been appointed as the trustee in the wrongful-death action, which names Ramsey County and correctional officers Xue Yang, Alex Grundhofer, Scott Brommerich and Antonio Rulli.
The county’s spokesperson and sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.
According to the lawsuit, Bakke, a 37-year-old artist and graphic designer, caregiver at a long-term care facility and severe hemophiliac, was booked into the Ramsey County Jail on suspicion of drug possession on Aug. 7, 2022, with a visible head injury.
The four Ramsey County correctional officers were aware of the injury to his forehead when Bakke was booked, yet they did so without noting his hemophilia, a diagnosed condition that was previously documented in his inmate file, the lawsuit alleges.
“Part of the problem is, they didn’t do a CT scan of his head to see if there was hemorrhaging at that point in time,” Student said.
The correctional officers also failed to note his prescribed medication and instructions for administering it, which also were in his inmate file at the time of booking, the lawsuit continues.
Bakke began displaying neurological signs and symptoms on Aug. 7 and “began vocally and continually complaining about severe pain,” the lawsuit says. His condition deteriorated overnight and into the early morning hours of Aug. 8, “at which point he was unable to stand or walk, and was yelling out in pain and yelling for his mother.”
In response, according to the lawsuit, the four correctional officers went to Bakke’s jail cell, handcuffed him and carried him to a cell in the segregation unit, where they laid him down and left. They did not report Bakke’s condition to medical personnel or request medical treatment.
“That’s the point where there’s no excuse to not send him to the hospital immediately, whether you are a correctional officer or medical staff,” Student said.
Bakke’s condition “continued to deteriorate unabated over the course of the next 30 hours” and he was found unresponsive in his jail cell on Aug. 9, the lawsuit says.
Bakke was then hospitalized, where “imaging revealed extensive intraparenchymal cerebral hemorrhaging and related brain injuries,” according to the lawsuit. He died on Aug. 27, having never regained consciousness.
Previous lawsuit
The lawsuit in Bakke’s death followed a $3 million settlement in June involving another alleged case of inmate mistreatment and medical neglect at the Ramsey County jail.
Miri Mozuch-Stafford had filed the civil rights lawsuit against Ramsey County and various employees. She said correctional officers tackled her to the ground when she was handcuffed with her arms behind her back at the jail on Feb. 8, 2021. Her tibia was fractured and an artery was severed. Mozuch-Stafford, who was in jail after a disorderly conduct arrest, said she wasn’t taken for medical treatment for 17 hours.
Student and Meshbesher also represented Mozuch-Stafford in her lawsuit.
“I don’t know what gets lost in the mix when you’re working in the Ramsey County Jail, but obviously things need to change,” Student said Tuesday. “And this is just another example of that.”
The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners expressed concerns to the Minnesota Department of Corrections about medical care provided to inmates at the jail, they said earlier this year. Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who is in charge of the jail, had also sounded the alarm about overcrowding.
The DOC said in February it conducted an investigation and that it showed staffing shortages led to delayed or denied medical treatment of inmates. The state agency ordered Fletcher to reduce the jail’s population, and the sheriff’s office submitted a plan to decrease the headcount by about 60 inmates by transferring them to other facilities.
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