By Jeremy Kohler
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
PINE LAWN &— Surveillance video from inside the Pine Lawn jail, obtained by the Post-Dispatch, shows that an inmate used a shoelace to try to hang himself last September, and shows how police and corrections officers failed to notice or act on the suicide attempt for several minutes despite video monitors in the police office.
Bernard Scott was the subject of a Post-Dispatch story last week. He was being held in the Pine Lawn jail on Sept. 27 when a paramedic from Northeast Fire Protection District was summoned to check out his complaint of abdominal pain and bleeding. The paramedic wrote in his report that he told police officers and jailers that Scott needed to go to the emergency room.
A corrections officer started paperwork for the release, and Scott changed into his clothes to get ready to board the ambulance. But a police supervisor, Sgt. Willie Epps, canceled the release, the paramedic said. Scott, 44, who was being held in lieu of $360 bail for traffic cases, was ordered to change back into his jumpsuit and sent back to his cell.
The video, obtained by the Post-Dispatch this week through a Sunshine Law request, shows the arrival of the paramedic and another EMT to the jail, and their examination of Scott. It shows the paramedic and EMT talking with police officers for about five minutes. There is no audio.
The video shows Scott changing into his street clothes to get ready to leave on the ambulance – then changing back into his orange jump suit after his release is canceled. He returns to his cell.
Although Scott denied in an interview with the Post-Dispatch that he tried to kill himself, the video shows him for about two minutes fiddling with a shoelace, looping it into a noose, then he appears to be doing something with the bars on his cell door, and then sitting down to try to hang himself. It is not clear where he got the lace.
Although his face cannot be seen as he is up against the door, Scott’s body is seen rolling back and forth as he hangs. About two minutes after his suicide attempt begins, corrections officer Angela Henderson walks to the cell door and looks in, then returns to the office.
“He appeared to be having a seizure and shaking,” Henderson wrote in her statement. “I called for Sgt. (Willie) Epps and Cpl. (C.K.) Harmon to come check on the prisoner.”
The video shows Harmon looking into Scott’s cell about a minute later, for about 12 seconds, then returning to the office.
“I observed Scott sitting on the floor, quiet, with his knees raised and his hands clasped together across them,” Harmon wrote in his statement. “I returned to the supervisor’s office to prepare a supplemental report relative to the incident and inform Sgt. Epps on Scott as I had just observed him.”
Harmon, reached by phone Wednesday by a reporter, said he had no comment.
The video shows officers looking at surveillance video in the police office. More than two minutes after his previous visit to Scott’s cell, Harmon returns to the cell door with Epps.
“As we approached (Scott’s cell), I noticed a black shoelace tied to the middle bar of the cell,” Epps wrote in his statement.
They peer in together, and open the door. Epps begins chest compressions.
About eight minutes later, another ambulance arrives and EMTs go to the jail cell. They stabilize Scott and transport him to Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Scott said last week that he was in a coma for more than 11 days and hospitalized almost three weeks.