The sister of a man who died in the Rio Arriba County Detention Center in 2024 filed a lawsuit against the county commission, jail staff and the jail’s medical provider for his wrongful death.
Bernadette Jaramillo filed the lawsuit on Jan. 20 in Santa Fe District Court with four claims against the defendants, for the death of John John Martinez, 49, of Chimayó.
Jaramillo named detention center administrator Jose Luis Gallegos and supervisory jail guard Carmen Gonzales in addition to medical provider Roadrunner Health Services in the lawsuit.
Martinez was being held in jail without bail on charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after allegedly attacking a man with a pick ax, according to court records.
He was in the Tierra Amarilla jail from Nov. 19, 2023 through Jan. 22, 2024, Jaramillo’s attorney Jonathan Woods wrote in the lawsuit complaint.
Martinez died from “massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage with aspiration of blood and acute fentanyl toxicity,” the lawsuit said.
Suicide Watch
A social worker evaluated Martinez on Dec. 6, 2023 after he expressed suicidal ideations and he told them he was having a hard time and had anxiety and depression. Because of that, he was placed on suicide watch, initially with required checks every five minutes, which decreased to 15 minutes by Dec. 11, the lawsuit stated.
“Despite these findings, Defendants failed to provide sustained mental-health treatment or evaluation by an appropriately qualified provider,” Woods wrote in the lawsuit. “There is no record that Mr. Martinez was ever evaluated by a psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse practitioner, physician, or other licensed prescriber before or after his suicide-watch status was reduced or terminated.”
Sometime in “late” December 2023, Martinez was sent back to general population, he wrote.
Just weeks later, Martinez started getting really sick with abdominal pain, gastrointestinal distress, nausea and had difficulty eating. The medical provider, Roadrunner Health Services, gave him antacids and a drug used to treat gas that is clinically dubious.
Staff then started prescribing Martinez “fluoxetine, trazodone, gabapentin, and ibuprofen, despite known gastrointestinal risks” and never reassessed his medications, despite his continued complaints of abdominal pain.
“The combination of untreated gastrointestinal disease, medication risks, psychological stress, and substance-use history placed Mr. Martinez at high risk of gastrointestinal hemorrhage, a risk Defendants ignored despite repeated warning signs,” Woods wrote.
Martinez was “visibly ill, pale, weak, and in obvious distress by Jan. 21. Fellow detainees observed him doubled over in pain and exhibiting symptoms consistent with internal bleeding, overdose, or withdrawal,” Woods wrote.
Around midnight, he started to vomit “a large quantity” of blood. His cellmate cleaned the blood and got him back into bed, because neither detention officers nor medical personnel responded, he wrote.
After that, he started to have abnormal breathing, Woods wrote.
“Overnight officers later claimed to have conducted hourly checks, yet no log reflects observation of the bleeding episode, the blood-soaked cell, or Mr. Martinez’s distress,” Woods wrote. “This demonstrates that checks were not meaningfully performed or were recorded after the fact.”
The following morning, around 6 a.m., a supervisor saw Martinez lying down and assumed he was asleep. It wasn’t until 7:12 a.m. that someone checked on Martinez and found him dead, cold to the touch and covered in blood.
When his cell was searched, Suboxone strips were found, the presumed source of a suspected overdose.
Lawsuit Counts
Jaramillo is suing the county under the civil rights act, including Martinez’s right against cruel and unusual punishment, due process, because jails are supposed to provide inmates with “safe conditions of confinement, meaningful monitoring, and timely medical and mental-health care, and to protect detainees from known and obvious risks of serious harm,” Woods wrote.
The county, Gallegos and Gonzales are being sued under the state’s Tort Claims Act for Martinez’s wrongful death.
Roadrunner Health Services LLC is being sued for negligence and intentional inflection of emotional distress.
All the defendants are being sued for a loss of consortium.
No dates have been set and no answers have been filed.