Newly released videos and reports provide further evidence that sheriff’s deputies in Riverside County missed signs that a murder suspect awaiting trial at a Southern California jail was planning on taking his life.
Among other failures, deputies did not complete a required security check before the man was found unresponsive in his cell, according to documents and video footage released by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. In a report issued in July, a coroner’s deputy inaccurately claimed that they had checked. The new report by sheriff’s investigators also confirms that jail officials failed to take action as the man talked about possibly dying by suicide and sought help.
The new evidence follows an investigation by The New York Times and The Desert Sun revealing that possibly suicidal detainees were not properly monitored and that coroner’s reports of jail deaths were frequently inaccurate in the sprawling jail system east of Los Angeles.
The death was among five suicides in Riverside County jails in recent years, several of which occurred after the department failed to intervene when detainees covered their cell cameras in mental health housing units or made suicidal statements, the news organizations found.
The department’s report, which was released this month in response to a public records request, says that Aaron Aubrey began to cover his cell door window with newspaper about an hour before he was found unresponsive, apparently to keep anyone from looking inside.
A deputy delivered lunch to his cell after he had begun covering his window, according to a report by the department’s lead investigator. He was taken to a hospital and put on life support but later died.
On Monday, the county sheriff, Chad Bianco, did not immediately respond to an email and a text message seeking comment about the episode.
Mr. Aubrey, 28, had an extensive history of mental illness and violence. He was being housed in a mental health unit while awaiting trial on two murder charges.
About 20 written reports from deputies about the suicide show that Mr. Aubrey was able to conceal his actions with no intervention by deputies or staff. Amado Layos, who was the department’s lead investigator on the case, found that Mr. Aubrey had requested a meeting with a behavioral health clinician the day he hanged himself, but was never seen.
The reports also included an exchange in which Mr. Aubrey said to a deputy: “Remember the day you told me you don’t care if I die or not.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” said a deputy, who was not identified in the report.
“Yeah you did,” Mr. Aubrey responded.
The accuracy of the exchange could not be independently verified because the department did not release a recording.
Mr. Layos wrote in his report that Mr. Aubrey began tearing up newspapers in his cell at 11:17 a.m. on Dec. 13, 2022, and applying something that looked like paste to his cell door window, which, apart from his cell camera, provided deputies with the only clear view inside. Deputies are required to conduct hourly safety checks and monitor cell cameras of detainees with mental illnesses.
Mr. Aubrey briefly stopped covering the window with newspaper while a deputy passed a food tray through a door slot, according to the report. Mr. Layos said the detainee finished covering the window as the deputy was leaving the unit.
The newly released footage shows Mr. Aubrey, with a white sheet draped around his neck, pacing slowly around the cell. He takes pieces of paper to the sink and wets them. He climbs to the camera and covers it with paper. What happened next is not visible; at that point there is only muffled audio.
Video footage shows one deputy leaving with a lunch cart at 11:44 a.m., just before Mr. Aubrey covered the camera in his cell. Deputies Ruben Valenzuela and Selena Harb did a security check around 12:30 p.m., according to reports. The video appears to show Deputy Valenzuela knocking on the door and waiting for a response — the deputy later reported he was telling the detainee to take down the covering. He bent over and used the door slot to peek inside. Spotting Mr. Aubrey, he grabbed his radio, eventually motioning to other deputies who came to help.
Mr. Aubrey hanged himself at some point between 11:46 a.m., when he covered his camera, and 12:32 p.m., when the deputy found him, Mr. Layos said.
In early 2022, a 21-year-old woman hanged herself in the same jail after she was ignored by deputies, jail video shows. She was the first of 19 detainees at Riverside County jails to die in 2022. That total, the highest the department had reported in at least four decades, ranked the jail system among the most lethal in the state and nation that year.
A camera inside Mr. Aubrey’s cell captured chaotic audio in which deputies can be heard calling to him through the door.
He was given emergency medical treatment, according to written reports from deputies and a coroner’s report.
Tamra Hauer, the deputy sheriff-coroner who completed the coroner’s report two months after Mr. Aubrey’s death, said a sergeant at the jail had told her that it was common for detainees to cover their cell cameras.
Her official account of the discovery of Mr. Aubrey in his cell contains inaccuracies including the date, as well as discrepancies between the video and reports from deputies at the scene.
The coroner’s report inaccurately stated that two security checks occurred after Mr. Aubrey covered his camera.
But none of the nearly 20 reports completed by deputies at the scene, including by the lead investigator, note any other security checks occurring between when Mr. Aubrey covered his cell window and when he was later found.
A Times/Desert Sun investigation found discrepancies when comparing the department’s public death summaries of the 2022 suicides against jail records turned over in civil suits.
The California Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation of the sheriff’s department in 2023, citing, in part, a concerning rise in jail deaths.
The post Deputies Missed Signs Before a Detainee Hanged Himself appeared first on New York Times.
