Man froze to death in jail and was likely placed in freezer as punishment, lawsuit says
.jpeg "Anthony Mitchell, 33, froze to death and was likely placed in a freezer at an Alabama jail after his arrest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit.")
A man arrested during a welfare check spent his final days in “hellish conditions” inside an Alabama jail cell before his internal body temperature drastically dropped — and he froze to death, a new federal lawsuit says.
His family accuses jail officials of restraining Tony Mitchell, 33, and placing him inside of a walk-in freezer, or a “similar frigid environment,” as punishment at Walker County Jail and leaving him there for hours before he died on Jan 26, according to the wrongful death lawsuit filed Feb. 13 by his mother.
“This case raises an appalling question: how does a man literally freeze to death while incarcerated in a modern, climate-controlled jail, in the custody and care of corrections officers?,” a complaint says.
While Mitchell’s autopsy report hasn’t been released yet, an ER doctor, who spent more than three hours trying to resuscitate him, wrote in his medical records that it was tough to understand how his internal body temperature dropped to 72 degrees while in police custody, according to the complaint.
“I do believe that hypothermia was the ultimate cause of his death,” the ER doctor wrote, the complaint says.
Margaret Mitchell, Mitchell’s mother, is suing Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith, who was present during Mitchell’s arrest and detention, several corrections officers employed by the sheriff’s office, two nurses and an investigator with the sheriff’s office.
She accuses them of causing her son’s death.
McClatchy News contacted the sheriff’s office and the jail for comment on Feb. 14 and didn’t immediately receive a response.
Jon Goldfarb, the lead Birmingham-based attorney on the case, said in a statement to McClatchy News that evidence of the abuse Mitchell endured in jail would’ve been “buried” if it weren’t for the “bravery of a lone corrections officer.”
The corrections officer shared videos of Mitchell’s treatment inside the jail and was fired “for exposing the truth,” according to Goldfarb.
One of the videos the officer shared shows Mitchell being dragged out of his holding cell naked and being tased by one officer while others watched on Jan. 15, according to the complaint that includes a screenshot of this incident.
The former corrections officer who shared the videos, Karen Kelly, is also suing the Walker County Sheriff’s Office over her firing following Mitchell’s death, AL.com reported.
Why was Mitchell arrested and put in jail?
The lawsuit describes Mitchell as a man struggling with drug addiction, which worsened after his father died in late 2022.
On Jan. 12, Mitchell needed to go to the hospital but was instead locked naked in a bare isolation cell, described as a “dog kennel,” lacking a mattress, blanket and toilet, according to Goldfarb and the complaint.
This day, Mitchell arrived at his cousin’s house disheveled, emaciated and in a delusional state, and said he needed to go inside the house in order to find a box that held the remains of his baby brother, who had been stillborn, the complaint says. Mitchell’s claims about his baby brother’s body being in a box inside his cousin’s house weren’t true.
Mitchell’s cousin soon realized he direly needed psychiatric help and eventually called 911 after trying to contact the Walker County Sheriff’s Department, the complaint says.
Ultimately, deputies responded for a welfare check and found Mitchell in the front yard with a handgun before he fired a shot toward them and ran away into the nearby woods, according to a Jan. 13 Facebook post from the sheriff’s office.
After deputies tracked him down, he was booked into jail on attempted murder charges, the sheriff’s office said.
‘The worst case of inmate abuse I have ever seen’
During Mitchell’s 14 days of incarceration, the corrections officers are accused of standing by and not stopping Mitchell’s abuse, acting indifferent toward his urgent medical needs, failing to get him treatment and covering up what happened, according to the complaint.
These actions were captured on jail surveillance footage, the complaint says. Several screenshots of the footage are included in the complaint.
Goldfarb called it “the worst case of inmate abuse I have ever seen.”
Three days after Mitchell was placed in the isolated jail cell, naked, he was tased for an unspecified reason — causing his false teeth to fall out on Jan. 15, the complaint says. Mitchell lost his teeth due to years of drug abuse and personal neglect and was wearing the set of false teeth when he was arrested.
The officers never gave Mitchell his teeth back and sealed them in a property bag that was /later given to his mother after he died, the complaint says. The bag, dated Jan. 15, shows his false teeth remained in that bag since then.
As a result, Mitchell possibly had trouble eating jail food, according to the complaint. At one point, Mitchel’s cousin received a call from an officer saying Mitchell was refusing to eat.
Mitchell is likely put in jail’s freezer as form of punishment
Based on his unexplained hypothermia, Mitchell’s family believes that during the evening of Jan. 25 to Jan. 26, Mitchell was likely strapped in a restraint chair, put in the jail kitchen’s walk-in freezer as a potential punishment for “allegedly shooting at deputies” when he was arrested, the complaint says.
Jail footage shared by the former corrections officer shows him being brought back to his cell at around 4 a.m., when two correctional officers are seen laughing and smiling as Mitchell “lies motionless and naked” on the dirty cement floor, clearly needing medical help, the complaint says.
Goldfarb said this particular video will haunt him “forever.”
At the end of this video, Mitchell raises his head and looks to the deputies before they close his cell door and shut off the lights, the complaint says.
By 6 a.m., jail staff were indifferent to Mitchell who “lay dying of hypothermia,” the video shows, according to the complaint.
“While Tony languished naked and dying of hypothermia in the early morning hours of January 26 and his chances for survival trickled away, numerous corrections officers and medical staff wandered over to his open cell door to spectate and be entertained by his condition,” the complaint says.
“Any of these individuals could have saved his life by calling 911 and summoning an ambulance. No one did.”
At around 8:30 a.m., Mitchell is dragged out of his cell, placed in shackles and eventually brought to the hospital, according to the complaint, which argues his heart stopped beating by the time he arrived at Walker Baptist Hospital.
The lawsuit accuses the sheriff’s communications of lying in a statement shared with news outlets saying Mitchell was “alert and conscious” after a routine medical check when he was brought to the hospital.
Officials have not released any other details regarding the circumstances of Mitchell’s condition in custody or his death.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is now investigating Mitchell’s death following a request from the sheriff’s office, according to a Jan. 30 news release provided to McClatchy News.
When the investigation is completed, the findings will be given to the Walker County District Attorney’s Office, according to the agency.
“We think this case will only become more horrifying as the full facts come to light,” Will Smith, another attorney representing Mitchell’s family, told McClatchy News on Feb. 14.
The case comes a few months after another federal lawsuit was filed over how an Alabama man told officers he was experiencing a medical emergency outside of a Dollar General Store and was put in Geneva County Jail and later died, McClatchy News previously reported.
Goldfarb also represents that earlier case.
This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Man froze to death in jail and was likely placed in freezer as punishment, lawsuit says."
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