Gordon Sawyers burned down an art gallery to rid it of witches, ranted about hearing voices from God and dipped his toothbrush in a used toilet before brushing his teeth.
Yet correctional officers at the Rio Grande County Jail did not monitor Sawyers for three hours while he was in a suicide-prevention cell gouging his eye out of its socket, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Denver U.S. District Court.
Now Sawyers is suing Rio Grande County, Sheriff Brian Norton, and jailers for failing to adequately protect him from himself, according to the civil lawsuit filed by his attorneys, Jeffrey Hill of Colorado Springs and Maren Chaloupka of Scottsbluff, Neb.
Sawyers, 66, is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for physical and mental pain and suffering. He is also suing as a result of his new disability, blindness in his right eye, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit accuses Norton of failing to properly train staff to recognize and respond to a mentally ill inmate and did not adequately staff the jail.
“I don’t know anything about the lawsuit, so I can’t respond,” Norton said Friday.
Authorities arrested Sawyers on Nov. 17, 2015, on a charge of arson after he set fire to an art gallery in Creede believing that God had told him to “cleanse the business of witches with fire,” the lawsuit says.
At the time, Sawyers was suffering from acute, uncontrolled and severe mental illness, the lawsuit says. Mineral County Sheriff Fred Hosselkus faxed a report by licensed counselor noting that Sawyers was under the care of Nebraska psychiatrist, Dr. Eli Chesen, to the jail at 12:53 p.m. the following day.
“(Sawyers) has an unshakable belief that God speaks to him directly and that it is his duty to fight evil and witches,” the report said. It also said Sawyers had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been prescribed Zyprexa in August, three months earlier. “These beliefs have lasted over a year, but have intensified over the past four months.”
Chesen recommended that jailers watch him closely because, “it is likely that his delusions and behavior in reactions to his delusions may intensify.”
On Nov. 19, two days after Sawyers’ arrest, a mental health employee evaluated Sawyers, the lawsuit says. Clinician Crystal Ellison noted that Dr. Chesen had prescribed medications for Sawyers but his pills ran out two weeks earlier, provisionally diagnosed him with schizophrenia and recommended a psychiatric assessment and medication management for Sawyers.
On Nov. 20, Sawyers met briefly with a medical doctor but refused treatment. Jailers placed him in a special suicide-prevention cell and he did not receive any further medical or psychiatric care.
Law enforcement officers know that many inmates are mentally ill and are incapable of making rational decision and don’t have the psychiatric ability to cope with stress. The lawsuit said jailers should have been vigilant.
Standard suicide-watch criteria call for regular checks every 15 minutes, the lawsuit says. Jailers documented on surveillance logs that between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1, 2015, that Sawyers talked and shouted at imaginary people, urinated in his drinking cup, pouring toilet water on himself, disrobing and lying face down on the floor, not sleeping and complaining his food was poisoned.
Between 6:07 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. either on Dec. 1 and Dec. 2 of 2015 no one observed him at a time that his symptoms were escalating. Some time during that span of time, Sawyers gouged his right eye out of its socket, permanently blinding himself, the lawsuit says.
Only then did authorities take him to a hospital, the lawsuit says.
