The family of a Norfolk man who died in the city jail has a filed a lawsuit against the sheriff, his chief of staff, a deputy and several mental health workers, claiming negligence led to his death by suicide.
On Aug. 14, 2022, 24-year-old Philemon Stephen Vinson was taken into custody for failing to appear in court. The next day, he was denied bond.
During this time, the jail was using Wellpath, a third-party health provider, for much of its medical and mental health services. When he arrived, Vinson was screened by Sharon Rice, a nurse practitioner, and during the screening, Vinson said he had “feelings that there is nothing to look forward to or feel hopelessness/helplessness.” The lawsuit also alleges that Rice completed a “special need identification form,” during which Vinson said he was depressed and “no one cares about his feelings.”
Rice also finished a mental health referral form, which noted that Vinson mentioned symptoms of depression, but denied suicidal ideation. That form was also signed by Anne Purkeson, a licensed professional counselor who became director of Mental Health Services shortly before Vinson died. Rice and Purkeson did not place him on suicide watch, so Vinson went into general population.
Despite expressing feelings of depression and hopelessness, Vinson never spoke to a mental health professional, the lawsuit states. A medical record created by Purkeson, dated Aug. 15, said Vinson denied suicidal plans and would never hurt himself, but the lawsuit says that meeting never happened and Purkeson admitted to forging the document. Purkeson said she did not evaluate Vinson “because (the jail was) very short staffed, and it was just me running the Mental Health Department.”
On the day Vinson died, Deputy Cinclair Howard was tasked with “rounds,” or check-ins, every 30 minutes on Vinson’s cellblock. Rounds are documented with an electronic receiver at each end of the cellblock. At 10:51 a.m., Vinson and Howard “briefly interacted” while Howard delivered lunch, according to the lawsuit. At 11:08 a.m., the lawsuit states Howard “walked past Mr. Vinson’s cell without stopping or turning to look inside.” The round was logged by the electronic receiver. Thirty minutes later, another round for Vinson’s cellblock is logged, but the lawsuit claims Howard never looked in the cell.
“Deputy Howard later admitted that not every round he made on Aug. 18, 2022, was a ‘quality round’ and that he ‘might have short-changed or, you know, didn’t thoroughly look at some point.’ The truth is he did not look into Mr. Vinson’s cell at all during the ten rounds he made between delivering Mr. Vinson’s lunch and delivering his dinner,” the lawsuit states.
Just after noon, Vinson can be seen in surveillance images on the floor of his cell with fabric wrapped around his head, his arms twisting it around his neck. At the same time, Howard was performing rounds and would have been “easily visible” from the door, the lawsuit says. For the next 18 minutes, Vinson continued to be on the floor, tightening the fabric around his neck. At 12:22 p.m., Vinson used his bed sheets to tie knots to his bunk’s frame and position his body to where he could not breathe.
In another still image of the inside of Vinson’s cell, he can be seen suspended and not breathing. At 12:23 p.m., Howard escorted an inmate two doors down from Vinson back to their cell and passed Vinson without looking into his cell. At 12:52 p.m., Howard completed another round of the cellblock.
For the next three and a half hours, Vinson remained in the same position in his cell, and rounds were completed. Just four days after Vinson was taken into custody, he was found dead in his cell when Howard came to deliver his dinner at 4:24 p.m.
The Norfolk Sheriff’s Office declined to comment about the lawsuit. The office also did not answer questions about protocol regarding rounds and checking in on inmates.
According to the lawsuit, “systemic understaffing and insufficient attention” to mental health of inmates was already creating issues before Vinson was ever in custody. Just four months before Vinson died, the Norfolk City Jail’s psychiatrist, Matthew Sachs, resigned amid what he described as rampant prescription drug abuse fueled by the excessive distribution of medications to inmates.
The lawsuit names Baron, Rice, Purkeson, Howard, Director of Inmate Services Melissa Peppenhorst, Norfolk Sheriff’s Office Chief of Staff Wayne Handley and Wellpath LLC. Filed initially as a medical malpractice lawsuit in April, the lawsuit was amended on Aug. 15 to be a wrongful death case. Lawyers for Vinson’s family are asking for $3.5 million in compensatory damages and an additional $10 million in punitive damages.
According to previous reporting from The Virginian-Pilot, Sachs, a contractor for Wellpath, said at the time that the sheriff’s office demanded he begin meeting a quota that, in essence, would require inmate psychiatric appointments fall under 10 minutes. Sachs told The Pilot that it was “unethical and dangerous.” The Norfolk Sheriff’s Office denied it made any requests to Sachs for more inmate psychiatric appointments, though Sachs said he had a recording of a conversation with a high-ranking jail official that contradicts the denial.
In May 2022, three months before Vinson died, Norfolk Sheriff Joe Baron ordered an internal probe of the Norfolk City Jail’s mental health program.
“If such review in fact occurred, it did not result in any meaningful improvement of the ‘mental health operations’ of the jail,” the lawsuit states.
Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com
