By Andy Mannix
Star Tribune
HENNEPIN COUNTY, Minn. — The day Ryan Andrew Wodziak hanged himself in his jail cell, Hennepin County deputies ran late on several wellbeing checks, and fraudulently filed paperwork recording one check that never occurred, according an inspection report from Minnesota’s Department of Corrections.
Jail staff also failed to complete mandatory paperwork while booking Wodziak into the facility, including conducting a mental health assessment to identify his psychiatric needs, the report says.
Now, two years later, Wodziak’s parents are suing the jail and the hospital whose doctors treated him, Hennepin Healthcare, alleging the institutions failed in their duties to properly care for the severely mentally ill 36-year-old and should be held liable for his suicide.
Wodziak should have been in a psychiatric hospital, the lawsuit says. Instead, he was kept in solitary confinement for four months, often unmedicated, as he rapidly deteriorated and tried to kill himself multiple times. When he did kill himself on Feb. 17, 2023, by tying a bedsheet around his neck, jail staff had not checked on him for almost a half hour, the suit says.
“Living with mental illness should not result in a death sentence just because you go to jail,” said Jeff Storms, the lawyer representing Jill Myers and James Wodziak, Ryan’s parents. “People like Ryan Wodziak belong in hospitals and treatment facilities. They don’t belong in jail and they certainly don’t belong in solitary confinement.”
Representatives for Hennepin County and Hennepin Healthcare declined to comment on the litigation.
“The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office expresses our sincere condolences to the family and loved ones,” said sheriff spokeswoman Megan Larson in a statement. “The safety and well-being of those in our custody remains our top priority, and we are committed to the people in our care.“
Wodziak’s history of mental illness was well documented.
He was involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities off and on starting at age 18, stemming from a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder— a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar symptoms. When not properly treated, Wodziak “would hallucinate, become severely delusional and paranoid, and have thoughts of harming himself,” the lawsuit says.
In October 2022, Wodziak “became agitated” while at the Hennepin County Government Center, and spit on a law enforcement officer trying to remove him. He was booked in the Hennepin County jail on felony assault charges. But due to his mental condition, doctors found Wodziak incompetent to face the criminal case.
He was civilly committed once again, which should have triggered a transfer to a psychiatric hospital. There, doctors could have worked to restore him to competency so he could face the charges. Instead, the suit says, they kept him in isolation in the jail, where he didn’t leave his cell, sometimes not even to shower for a month at a time.
For his first two months, Wodziak refused his medication, and the hospital staff did not give him any, even though he had a court order for doctors to medicate him involuntarily if needed, according to the lawsuit.
Jail staff documented his deterioration, according to the lawsuit, noting he was showing “severe mental health problems,” urinating on or stuffing garbage under his cell door, conversing with imaginary people and “laughing hysterically at times inappropriately to unknown things.”
A doctor from Hennepin Healthcare documented “severe psychosis,” noting during a visit that Wodziak laid on his bed, did not answer her questions and mumbled incoherently. The doctor recommended Wodziak be transferred to HCMC’s Acute Psychiatric Services department. But the understaffed jail never did do so, according to the lawsuit.
On several occasions he tried to kill himself by biting his arm. He told staff he was “going to chew into the veins and bleed to death,” according to the suit.
“Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with? I am ready to die!” he reportedly said.
A nurse found him one day with blood and spit dripping from his chin, according to the civil suit. He told staff “that he cannot control his voices,” and that “they keep telling him to bite his tongue and now he did it.”
For a while, the jail placed Wodziak on suicide watch, meaning staff were required to check on him every 15 minutes. But a nurse took him off that status on Feb. 11, 2023, after falsely recording he was compliant in taking his medication, according to the lawsuit.
Six days later, a jail staff member found Wodziak hanging in his cell by a bedsheet. He was pronounced brain dead at the scene and died days later at the hospital.
A review conducted by the Department of Corrections later that year because of Wodziak’s death found a series of policy violations on the part of the jail, including staff failing to complete and document a mental health assessment when Wodziak first arrived.
The day of his death, three well-being checks were conducted late, according to the report. One was entered even though investigators found it never occurred.
“The well-being check that was not conducted but documented as such is a very serious violation,” reads the report. ”A repeat of fraudulent documentation around well-being checks will result in further corrective action.”
After his death, the jail didn’t conduct a formal review in the 90-day required window, the report found.
The DOC ordered the jail to provide training and policy refreshers to its employees.
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