By Marcus K. Garner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Fabian Avery III weighed 153 pounds when he was transferred from the Fulton County jail to alleviate overcrowding.
The 17-year-old was found dead nearly a month later in an isolation cell at the municipal jail in the South Georgia town of Pelham, his 6-foot-1-inch frame down to 108 pounds, according to reports.
On Thursday, Avery’s mother, Sandrini Scott, sued the city of Pelham and the city’s police department in federal court claiming wrongful death and civil rights violations, and naming Police Chief Nealie McCormick, city manager Doug Westberry, the jail’s nurse and doctor, and four correctional officers as defendants.
Avery died of appendicitis and complications from a bowel obstruction, according to investigative documents compiled by the GBI.
He had been arrested in December 2010 on armed robbery charges and was transferred to Pelham on Feb. 15, 2011. The lawsuit claims that Avery first reported being ill on Feb. 24, 2011, and was given minimal attention when he complained of nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and lower back pains, as well as frequently vomiting and defecating on himself.
“In the face of Avery’s obvious pain, deteriorating condition and pleas for help from Fabian himself, from his family and from other inmates, the medical, supervisory and correctional staff at the Mize Street Detention Center stood by and was deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs,” the lawsuit reads.
“This is an unfortunate case,” Pelham City Attorney Philip Savrin said. “If [the jail staff] had any indication that he needed any more medication, it would have been provided.”
According to the GBI report, the jail’s nurse suggested that Avery might have been faking some of his symptoms, noting that he would not produce a urine sample when asked and that she caught him on one occasion sticking his finger in his mouth to force himself to vomit.
Dr. Thomas Lincoln, an independent medical doctor contracted by Scott’s attorney Jay Hirsch to provide an expert opinion for the lawsuit, claims the staff ignored Avery as he became sicker.
“Yet, they did not do anything to improve Fabian Avery’s condition,” Lincoln said in his report — created from reading the GBI report and autopsy, Avery’s Fulton County jail and juvenile detention health reports, and Pelham reports on Avery. “Clearly, Fabian Avery was in persistent pain and needed qualified, reasonable medical attention in a hospital.”
Hirsch said that although the Fulton County jail and its staff aren’t named in the lawsuit, there is a chance that the agency and its leaders also could be held culpable to some degree.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office runs the jail and outsources housing of some of its inmates to other jail facilities across the state to satisfy a federal mandate to alleviate overcrowding. Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan said Fulton no longer houses inmates at Pelham.