Baltimore jail staff failed to protect a deaf man killed by cellmate, lawsuit alleges
In the days before Javarick Gantt was strangled to death in jail, he was forced to share a cell with a first-degree murder suspect whose violent behavior had already alarmed his previous cellmate, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Gantt, who used sign language because he was deaf, struggled to communicate with corrections officers and other detainees, making him especially vulnerable to violence, his family alleges. Their lawsuit sheds new light on the circumstances surrounding the 2022 jailhouse killing, which raised significant concerns about operations in the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center.
Gordon Staron, 36, was awaiting trial in an apparently random stabbing attack that prosecutors called an 'axe murder.' Gantt, by comparison, was facing minor charges. Attorneys for Gantt's family argue the two men never should have been assigned to the same cell, saying in court papers that his death was 'entirely predictable and preventable.'
The family wants to know how the state-run detention facility let this happen, but they've been stonewalled from the beginning in their attempts to get information, said Gantt's father, Rick Barry Sr.
'Nothing, zero, no answers,' Barry said in a phone interview.
The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which runs the jail, didn't immediately provide comment Tuesday.
Staron ultimately pleaded guilty to strangling Gantt after a jury convicted him in the axe attack. He was sentenced last year to life without parole.
Gantt, 34, weighed little over 100 pounds (45 kilograms), records show. Most significantly, he wasn't able to call for help because he communicated primarily by sign language, according to court papers.
The lawsuit argues he stood little chance against a cellmate who was experiencing serious mental health issues, displaying paranoid and volatile behavior, and being treated for alcohol and substance abuse. Staron was initially arrested after he drove into Baltimore from the suburbs and attacked a homeless man at a bus stop, according to prosecutors.
Nonetheless, records show he and Gantt received similar security classifications, the scoring system jail administrators use to determine where detainees are housed.
About two weeks before Gantt's death, Staron was involved in an altercation and punched two other men, according to police reports. Afterward, his frightened cellmate asked to be moved, leaving an empty bed that would soon be occupied by Gantt, the lawsuit says.
Gantt was transferred into Staron's cell after reporting that his previous cellmate 'had been bullying him and attempting to assault him,' according to the lawsuit. He communicated the message in sign language after flagging someone down from his cell window. A corrections officer then asked administrators to move Gantt 'to a safer cell,' which landed him with Staron, according to jail records.
'With his disability, I feel he was overlooked,' Gantt's father said.
That was nine days before Gantt was found unresponsive when he didn't get up for breakfast. Other inmates reported hearing him 'making noises and banging on his cell door' during the night, according to police, but several hours passed before corrections officers noticed something was wrong.
Gantt's family says he should have received special accommodations and safety precautions. They also allege that corrections officers failed to properly monitor the dorm the night of his death. The lawsuit against the state corrections department and staff members seeks damages in excess of $50 million.
Gantt, who left behind a young daughter, was jailed for months amid a backlogged court system. His charges stemmed from a 2019 domestic dispute in which no one was seriously injured. But largely because he missed court dates and probation check-ins, he was ordered held without bail and remained behind bars awaiting trial.
A judge decided to keep Gantt incarcerated even after he explained that he was struggling to navigate the bureaucracy of the courts.
'This was my first time on probation,' he said through a sign language interpreter during a bail hearing, according to the lawsuit. 'They didn't tell me what to expect, what to do.'
Despite his hearing impairment, Gantt was gregarious and open-hearted, with many friends in the deaf community and beyond, loved ones said. He formed close bonds wherever he went — including in the Baltimore area, where he had moved somewhat recently after growing up in Florida. But his father said Gantt became helpless and confused when the legal system failed to properly accommodate his disability.
'The tragedy is that no one has told this family anything, at any time,' said Baltimore attorney Andrew Slutkin, who represents the family. 'There's been no communication of what happened, how it happened and what they're doing to prevent it from happening again.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
It can get much more worse for California: the return of Kamala
Can you think of any political problem to which the words 'Kamala' and 'Harris' might sound like a solution? Me neither. It is with a sense of some foreboding, therefore, that we learn that the former vice-president may be plotting to become the next governor of troubled California. And there we were thinking that it couldn't get any worse than Gavin Newsom. In recent weeks, the Golden State has looked more like a war zone than the home of Hollywood, beach bums and LGBTQ+ activism; National Guard troops and even Marines have battled the looters and vandals rampaging through Los Angeles. Their grievance? Donald Trump's attempt to send undocumented migrants home. This progressive Mecca would obviously have no truck with that, so on went the balaclavas and out came the Molotov cocktails and, inevitably, the keffiyehs. Think Queers for Palestine meets the White Walkers. One viral clip said it all. There was governor Newsom extolling the virtues of California as the liberal capital of the United States and one of the best places to live in the world, superimposed against footage of masked rioters lobbing rocks from bridges at police cars. Even before the unrest, all was not well in the state of California. The home of America's most progressive policies – from vehicle emission crackdowns to marijuana legalisation and liberal criminal justice reform – has long been dogged by low-performing public schools, homelessness, housing shortages, soaring poverty and erratic water supplies. January's wildfires, which caused hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage, are barely in the rearview mirror; despite a heroic effort to blame climate change, they were undeniably made worse by the negligence and lack of preparation from the state. But for the love of God, why Kamala Harris? Why now? If the adage about leaving every room better than you found it is true, you'd have thought she could do the world a favour simply by walking out the door and never coming back. Incredibly, the voters of California may disagree. Her brand recognition in the state – she served as district attorney of San Francisco, state attorney general and senator, not to mention her stint as VP – would enable her to leapfrog a contested primary to become the instant frontrunner, despite her patchy record in those roles. From there, she would be within touching distance of winning. In another display of her trademark myopia, however, her true ambitions may lie once again with the Oval Office, for which California could provide a springboard in 2028. Yup, even after her historic drubbing last year. She is unburdened, I suppose, by that humiliation. Governor Newsom is himself tipped as a presidential contender. The way he has used the LA riots as a perch from which to launch tirade after tirade at Trump – in an interview with the New York Times podcast on Thursday, he called the president a 'stone cold liar' after he had dispatched troops to California without telling him – shows naked political positioning. He wants to be the man to take the fight to the Donald. But Newsom's term is up in November next year. Little wonder Harris is giving it the eye. By the same token, little wonder that when she telephoned Newsom to offer her support this week, the call was sent straight to voicemail.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Tears, disagreements and dried mushrooms: how Erin Patterson responded over eight days in the witness box
It was 12.40pm on Thursday, and Erin Patterson was striding from the witness box to the dock. 'Just wait there, Ms Patterson,' Justice Christopher Beale said. She didn't hear him and kept walking, head down, tears in her eyes, a tissue in her left hand. Beale asked again, and this time Patterson responded. She turned and headed back the way she came. But it was over; there were no more questions, no more agree or disagree, correct or incorrect. After eight days, Patterson had finished her evidence in her triple murder trial. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Patterson, 50, is charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder over the alleged poisoning of four lunch guests with beef wellingtons served at her house in Leongatha on 29 July 2023. Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering the relatives of her estranged husband, Simon Patterson – his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and aunt, Heather Wilkinson – and attempting to murder his uncle, Ian Wilkinson, Heather's husband. The last of more than 50 witnesses, and the only one called by the defence, Patterson spent about 25 hours answering questions in the Victorian supreme court, sitting in Morwell. For almost all of Patterson's evidence, her seat in the dock was one of the only empty chairs in court four, with the public typically queueing for hours outside the Latrobe Valley law courts building to try and get inside. The questions ranged from the perfunctory, such as confirming her full name and age, to the puerile, about 'pooing your pants' and diarrhoea in roadside bushes, and the pointed, about whether she intended to kill her lunch guests by feeding them beef wellingtons laced with death cap mushrooms. Patterson, at various points, disagreed or said she had a different memory from the evidence given by her children, Simon, Ian, medical workers, health department officials, and child protection workers. For most of her time in the witness box, Patterson answered questions under cross-examination by prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. It was clear on the first day of the trial, and remains clear after 30 days of evidence, that the key issue in the case is this: did Patterson mean to put death cap mushrooms in the beef wellingtons she fed to her lunch guests? Patterson says it was an accident, and she explained during her time in the witness box how it may have happened: she foraged for mushrooms, sliced them, dried them in her dehydrator, in the weeks before the lunch, then put them in a container in her pantry. Around April 2023, she also bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne for a different meal, but after opening the packet and finding their smell overpowering, she put them in a container too. By Patterson's telling, when she was preparing a mushroom duxelles for the beef wellingtons on the morning of 29 July 2023, she took a taste after cooking down button mushrooms for 45 minutes. They tasted bland, so she added some dried mushrooms from her pantry, after rehydrating them and chopping them up. Erin Patterson hosts lunch for estranged husband Simon's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt and uncle Heather and Ian Wilkinson. Patterson serves beef wellington. All four lunch guests are admitted to hospital with gastro-like symptoms. Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson die in hospital. Don Patterson dies in hospital. Victoria police search Erin Patterson's home and interview her. Ian Wilkinson is discharged from hospital after weeks in intensive care. Police again search Erin Patterson's home, and she is arrested and interviewed. She is charged with three counts of murder relating to the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson. Jury is sworn in. Murder trial begins. Jury hears that charges of attempting to murder her estranged husband Simon are dropped. On 1 August, after she says her estranged husband accused her of using the dehydrator to poison his parents, Patterson started to panic, and came to a troubling realisation: some of the foraged mushrooms may have made their way into the dish. This was the first time the accident alluded to by her lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, in his opening submission on 30 April, had been fleshed out. 'As I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland to me, so I decided to put in the dried mushrooms that I'd bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry,' Patterson said on 4 June. 'You told the jury yesterday about the Tupperware container that was in your pantry,' Mandy asked, a short time later. 'At that time, to your knowledge, what was in that Tupperware container?' 'At that time, I believed it was just the mushrooms that I'd bought in Melbourne,' Patterson responded. 'And now what do you think might have been in that Tupperware container?' her lawyer asked. 'Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.' Most questions put to Patterson, however, did not relate directly to intent, but instead to other matters which the prosecution alleges can be used by the jury to find her guilty. One of the questions the prosecution has said it will not expect the jury to answer is that of motive, with Rogers telling jurors in her opening address that they still may not know at the end of the evidence why Patterson had done as alleged. Many questions related to key issues in the case: why did Patterson's evidence contradict the evidence of others? Did Patterson actually eat the same lunch as her guests? Was she really sick? Where did the death caps come from? Why did she act the way she did after the lunch? Why did she tell the lies she has admitted to? What else has she lied about? 'I am going to take you first to the lie you told to the police about never owning a dehydrator?' was the first question asked by Rogers, late on the morning of 5 June. 'Yeah,' Patterson responded. On it went, for the rest of that week, an extended break for the King's Birthday weekend, and then again into the next. Rogers asked more than 200 questions that included the words 'agree or disagree' or 'correct or incorrect'. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion During her evidence in chief, while questioned by Mandy, and in cross-examination, a series of information emerged for the first time in the trial. Patterson spoke about problems with binge eating and purging, dating back to her 20s, and issues with her self-esteem linked in part to her mother forcing her to weigh herself as a child. She had a habit of consulting 'Dr Google' about any affliction, and a distrust of the medical system. 'So your concerns had moved from ovarian cancer to brain lymphoma and then on to heart conditions and MS?' Mandy asked her at one point, about conversations she had with Simon in 2021. 'That's right, yep,' Patterson said, acknowledging she had never been diagnosed with any of these conditions. 'The train just kept going.' By 2023, Patterson was planning gastric bypass surgery, she said, and had a pre-assessment for that surgery booked at a Melbourne clinic. It later emerged the clinic offered no such surgery, with Patterson saying she must have been mistaken in her evidence, though it did offer liposuction. On the day of the lunch, Patterson said, she ate a large portion of orange cake, and then, after her guests left, vomited it all back up again. 'Is it your evidence that the vomit was partly constituted by the beef wellington; correct?' Rogers asked her. 'I have no idea what was in the vomit,' Patterson responded. 'At all?' Rogers persisted. 'Well, it – how could I? It's vomit. Unless you can see a bean or a piece of corn,' Patterson said. 'Well, you didn't have corn at the lunch?' Rogers asked. 'That was an example,' Patterson said, later agreeing that she had not told any medical person she vomited after the lunch, but denying that the vomiting was a lie. Rogers asked whether photos of dried mushrooms on an electronic scale showed Patterson was trying to calculate the fatal dose of death caps needed for humans; she disagreed. Patterson said she had not deliberately travelled to two nearby towns to collect death cap mushrooms on days when information taken from mobile phone base stations suggests she may have been in the area. Patterson said she did not own a set of four matching plates, let alone the four large grey plates that Ian said her guests were served, while Patterson used a smaller coloured plate. 'I suggest your whole story is untrue that you plated the food without discrimination,' Rogers asked her. 'You're wrong,' Patterson replied. The prosecution said she lied to her lunch guests about being diagnosed with cancer, thinking they would all die, and she could get away with it. But in Patterson's telling, she may have misled people, in part because she liked their sympathy and wanted help with the logistics of the weight loss surgery. She expressed regret, many times over, about the messages she was sharing with her Facebook friends, particularly about Don and Gail Patterson, but denied they were a representation of her true feelings. Patterson was emotional at the start and the end of her evidence, but largely unmoved throughout. She would start to breathe heavily, her voice would catch, and she started to dab her face with tissues when speaking about Don and Gail Patterson, or about her children, as she did in her last few minutes in the box, when she was asked details of their ballet and flying lessons. Patterson could become fixated on certain details, including correcting Rogers on what day of the week 28 April 2023 was (a Friday, not a Monday). Her answer to the last question, on why she said she was not 'very familiar' with the suburb of Glen Waverley, was: 'I may have been being pedantic; I do do that.' Occasionally, hints of dry humour and an appreciation of her circumstances appeared to show through. When asked by Mandy who knew about her binge eating, Patterson responded, 'Nobody. Nobody. Everybody now, but nobody knew then.' The court did not sit on Friday. The trial, which was estimated to run for five to six weeks, will continue into an eighth on Monday.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Fresh heartbreak for friends and family of teen Isla Bell after she was allegedly murdered and her body was found in a fridge at a tip six weeks later
Friends and family of tragic teenager Isla Bell have confronted the man accused of murdering her and hiding her body in a fridge at locations around Melbourne. About a dozen, some wearing orange ribbons, crowded into the cramped room 22 of Melbourne Magistrates' Court to face Marat Ganiev when he appeared on Friday. Orange and red ribbons - to reflect Ms Bell's distinctive hair colour - were tied all over Melbourne in her memory after she was allegedly killed by Ganiev, 54. He appeared in court alongside co-accused Eyal Yaffe, 58, who has been charged with assisting an offender with murder. But family and friends heard the process will be delayed after Ganiev requested an adjournment to secure additional cash to fund his legal defence. Ganiev, who appeared in his prison greens via videolink from Port Phillip Prison, barely spoke during the short hearing. Yaffe, who is on bail, was late to join the online court link as Ms Bell's supporters waited for the matter to proceed. Previously released court documents outlined the alleged harrowing final moments of Ms Bell's life. Ms Bell told her friend a 'sugar daddy' had lavished her with gifts and 'saved her from sex traffickers'. Police allege Ganiev murdered Ms Bell just after midnight on October 7 last year. Homicide Squad detectives allege CCTV outside Ganiev's St Kilda East apartment complex captured what appeared to be him attacking Ms Bell. Cameras recorded Ms Bell entering his apartment at 9.27pm on October 5, but she never left alive, police allege. From a gap in the front kitchen window, police allege Ms Bell's head could be seen 'whipping around' as she was struck by Ganiev. 'She falls to the ground and Ganiev can then be seen striking her on the ground of the kitchen,' court documents state. 'What appears to be Bell's head can be seen rising up before being pushed back down by Ganiev's arm.' The footage allegedly captured Ms Bell alive between 12.43am until 2am when she vanished from sight. Police allege Ganiev went to work cleaning the apartment over the following days. The court heard Ms Bell had thought she had found the man of her dreams in the days before she was allegedly brutally murdered by a man more than twice her age. Daily Mail Australia revealed that police allege the 19-year old texted her friend just hours before her alleged murder expressing her happiness. In a Snapchat post sent on October 7, Ms Bell, who was last seen leaving her Brunswick home in Melbourne three days earlier on October 4, told her friend that she had 'found the best sugar daddy', court documents state. Her remains were found at a tip at Dandenong six weeks later on November 19. Detectives allege Yaffe, of Hampton, became involved after receiving a call from Ganiev on October 8, a day after Ms Bell is said to have been killed. The following day, he allegedly drove to Ganiev's St Kilda East apartment and dropped off a new black fridge, returning on October 17 to remove the old one wrapped in plastic. Police allege Ms Bell's remains were inside the fridge. Over the following days the trailer was allegedly moved to three locations around Melbourne allegedly associated with Mr Yaffe, with one person later telling police it had a 'foul smell' and was attracting flies. Detective Senior Constable Benjamin Curran previously told the court it was the police case Yaffe knew the fridge contained her body and that she had been killed. 'At the time it had been 10 days since she had died … It's not a smell that can be mistaken or forgotten,' he said. When Yaffe was arrested, police allegedly found meth and $6,000 in cash on him. While initially denying his involvement in concealing Ms Bell's body, police allege Yaffe eventually admitted the crime, but claimed to have known nothing about how the teenager died. Ms Bell's family were in tears on November 25 last year when Magistrate Rohan Lawrence allowed Yaffe to walk free despite describing his alleged crimes as 'callous' and 'repugnant'. Ms Bell's family, who were seated at the rear of the court, sat stunned as Mr Lawrence outlined all of the reasons why he believed Yaffe was entitled to walk free. 'In my view the prosecution have not established Mr Yaffe is an unacceptable risk,' he said. In applying for bail, Yaffe's barrister Ian Hill KC said the former jeweller could live with his son, Ziv Yaffe, and be electronically monitored. It was a condition accepted by the magistrate, with Yaffe to be fitted with the monitor at all times while free on bail. Yaffe is forbidden from attending five addresses linked to the alleged crime or attempt to visit any ports where he could flee the country. The court heard Yaffe had been armed with a ticket to Bulgaria when he was arrested, having purchased it the day after police hauled him in for questioning. Prosecutors had argued Yaffe was not only a flight risk, but a risk to public safety and prosecution witnesses. 'In my view, the case against him does not hinge on witnesses but phone records, CCTV and statements to police,' Mr Lawrence said. 'There is no rational reason to believe he could interfere.' Ms Bell's heartbroken mother Justine Spokes issued a gut-wrenching statement last November as her daughter's accused killer faced court for the first time. 'I am so, so sorry my darling daughter,' she said. 'I could not protect you from your complex illnesses and this cruel world. 'I was so proud of your choices this year, your strength to endure despite your suffering. 'All you ever wanted was to create, make and nurture life, to love and be loved. 'We were so much looking forward to being reunited as a family again; my heart aches and cannot reconcile that's not going to happen.' She said her daughter was 'the gentlest soul, the kindest human and free spirited'. 'I will connect to you in spirit my care bear and no one can take that connection away from us,' she added.
