NEW YORK — The FBI today arrested a Riker’s Island correction officer and former captain for ignoring an inmate housed in a mental health unit who wanted emergency care because he swallowed a corrosive disinfectant.
The victim Jason Echevarria suffered internal burns and later died, officials said.
Terrence Pendergrass, 49, of Howard Beach, was charged with violating Echevarria’s constitutional rights, authorities said.
“Jason Echevarria should not have died,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. “As alleged, Terrence Pendergrass abused his power as a Rikers Island captain in charge of a vulnerable population of inmates with mental health issues by denying Echevarria access to medical care despite his obvious and urgent medical need for it.”
Adding, “The Constitution protects the civil rights of everyone, including prison inmates at Rikers. The kind of conduct alleged today cannot be tolerated in our criminal justice system.”
The New York Times reported that Echevarria, who suffered from bipolar disorder, had been placed in a solitary confinement unit after several suicide attempts and an attempt to swallow a battery.
Over the last five years, about 20 correction officers have been prosecuted in connection with assaults on inmates, according to the Bronx district attorney’s office, which has jurisdiction over Rikers Island.
If convicted, Pendergrass is facing up to 10 years in prison.
According to authorities, this is what happened:
- On the afternoon of August 18, 2012, Echevarria swallowed a powerful disinfectant/detergent combination in powder form, commonly referred to as a “soap ball,” sometimes provided to inmates to assist in the cleaning and disinfecting of cells.
- Echevarria had been given the soap ball by a new correction officer for the purpose of cleaning Echevarria’s cell following a sewage backup. The soap ball contained, among other things, ammonium chloride, a corrosive chemical that is life threatening if ingested.
- After Echevarria swallowed the soap ball, other inmates heard Echevarria banging on his cell door and asking for medical help.
- Echevarria also told a correction officer that he had swallowed a soap ball and needed medical attention.
- That correction officer in turn told Pendergrass, the captain—a supervisory correction officer—on duty at that time.
- Pendergrass responded that the correction officer should only call him if he needed help with the extraction of an inmate from a cell or if there was a dead body.
- A short time later, the same correction officer told Pendergrass that he saw vomit in Echevarria’s cell, and Pendergrass responded that Echevarria should “hold it.”
- Later the same day, a pharmacy technician assigned to distribute inmate medication saw that there was vomit in Echevarria’s cell, and that Echevarria’s skin appeared discolored.
- The pharmacy technician learned from a second correction officer, who was serving as an escort, that Echevarria had swallowed a soap ball, and Echevarria told both the pharmacy technician and the second correction officer that he needed medical help.
- The pharmacy technician informed the second correction officer that Echevarria could die if he did not receive medical attention.
- The second correction officer then informed Pendergrass that Echevarria had swallowed a soap ball and needed medical help.
- Despite all this, Pendergrass failed to contact any medical personnel about Echevarria’s condition. In fact, Pendergrass told the second correction officer that perhaps the officer had simply misheard Echevarria’s request for medical help, which the second correction officer responded was not the case.
- The next morning, Echevarria was found dead in his cell.
Echevarria died as a result of injuries caused by the ingestion of a caustic substance, consistent with the ingestion of a soap ball, an autopsy indicated. He had internal burns and scarring along his esophagus and into his trachea, indicating that he suffered aspiration of vomit into his lungs.
Rikers Island is a jail complex, located in the Bronx, New York, maintained by the New York City Department of Correction.
At the time of his death, Echevarria was an inmate incarcerated on Rikers Island in the Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates, a unit housing inmates who have committed infractions while incarcerated and who have been identified as needing mental health treatment.
Ironically, in 2012, New York City passed an initiative that addresses the conditions of confinement and treatment of inmates with mental illness.
Today, 38 percent of the New York’s Department of Correction’s average daily population has a mental health diagnosis, according to city officials.
About one third of those inmates meet established criteria for serious mental illness, which includes major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorders, state officials