{"id":16625,"date":"2015-11-19T22:29:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T22:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/?p=16625"},"modified":"2023-10-02T22:43:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T22:43:04","slug":"family-seeks-justice-in-dine-mans-border-town-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/2015\/11\/19\/family-seeks-justice-in-dine-mans-border-town-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Family seeks justice in Din\u00e9 man\u2019s border town death"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY COLLEEN KEANE<\/strong>
\nSPECIAL TO THE TIMES<\/p>\n

ALBUQUERQUE<\/strong> – When Felicia Herder went to look for her older brother, Harrison Mann Begay, with her mom and brother at the Montezuma County Police Department in Cortez, Colo., she didn\u2019t think it would be the last time she would see him. But she could tell he needed immediate medical help and asked the officer in charge to take him to the hospital.<\/p>\n

The family had driven to Cortez from their home in Tonalea, Ariz., because they had learned that Begay had been arrested for trespassing and public intoxication.<\/p>\n

The officer denied Herder\u2019s plea, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the family last month in the U.S. District Court in Denver.<\/p>\n

Early the next morning, October 27, 2013, Begay died in jail from alcohol poisoning and potential complications from a head injury, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

Begay was 38 years old when he died, according to Herder.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a wrongful death,\u201d said Herder.<\/p>\n

These events and others are detailed in the 40-page lawsuit filed last month by the family\u2019s attorney, Russell Sacks, of Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

Defendants in the case are Dennis Spruell, the Montezuma County Sheriff at the time; Montezuma County Commission, several deputies, a nurse from the sheriff\u2019s office, the Southwest Memorial Hospital and Dr. Todd Fowler, an emergency-medicine physician.<\/p>\n

Besides denying Herder\u2019s request that Begay receive medical attention before he was hauled off to jail, the lawsuit claims that hospital personnel were well aware that Begay had life-threatening medical needs, because he had been at the hospital twice in the previous two days.<\/p>\n

On both occasions, Begay registered near-lethal levels of blood alcohol content and trauma to the head, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Todd) Fowler, the doctor in charge of the ER (emergency room), recklessly and willfully failed to provide a higher level of medical care, even though it was available,\u201d Sacks wrote in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Sacks added that on the second visit to the hospital, Begay was \u201ccursorily\u201d treated for 10 minutes by hospital personnel in the back of a police car.<\/p>\n

\u201cFowler negligently treated Mr. Begay by only placing an arm band on his left wrist and taking his vital signs,\u201d Sacks stated.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on her brother\u2019s life, Herder said that he was always there for her, his kids, mom, family and friends when he was at home in Tonalea.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a family man. He did everything for my family,\u201d said Herder, referring to how he fixed mechanical things around the house and repaired cars and trucks when they broke down.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe taught me everything,\u201d she said mentioning that she learned how to speak the Navajo language, herd sheep and ride horses from Begay\u2019s guidance.<\/p>\n

As a single father, with the help of his mom, grandma and siblings, he also raised his seven children: two girls and five boys, ages 22 to 10, according to Herder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe miss him. It is really tough on my mom,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit, the last time Elizabeth Begay saw her son, he was lying unconscious and bleeding from the head, half on and off a makeshift cart in the booking area of the Cortez police department.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit claims that standard care should have included: obtaining IV access to correct electrolyte abnormalities; determining risk of aspiration, clearing out his stomach, and\/ or transferring him to the closest detox center located in Durango, Colo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe death of Mr. Begay is an example of the systemic problem of defendants\u2019 failure to provide adequate medical attention to a Navajo citizen who was known to be suffering from an acute alcohol episode,\u201d wrote Sacks, who referred to this practice as \u201cpatient dumping\u201d.<\/p>\n

Additionally, according to the lawsuit, Fowler failed to obtain Begay\u2019s \u201cinformed\u201d consent for discharge from the hospital because Begay wasn\u2019t in a frame of mind to be able to make such a decision and as a fluent Navajo language speaker, he wasn\u2019t provided with an interpreter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time deaths have occurred in the Montezuma County jail. According to a Cortez Journal news report, two other inmates died in jail in 2013 and a 43-year-old woman died in her cell last month.<\/p>\n

One of the only safety nets for alcohol and drug dependent people in Cortez is The Bridge Emergency Homeless Shelter. Located near the jail, The Bridge provides individual sleeping rooms, laundry and bath facilities, along with meals and educational groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a wide welcome mat. We don\u2019t want anyone freezing to death,\u201d said Laurie Knutson, the shelter\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n

Knutson added that The Bridge serves a need that reaches around 290 people a year, including many members of the Navajo and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.<\/p>\n

But, she added, the community needs a detox center that can provide medical treatment and care.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion, (The Bridge) is used as a de-facto detox center, and we are not (that),\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sheriff Steve Nowlin, who took office in January 2015, replacing Dennis Spruel, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, said that he\u2019s already started a conversation about setting up a detox center with the new director of the Southwest Memorial Hospital and plans to reach out to the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Nation and nearby communities for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to do the right thing before it gets worse. We (in government) are supposed to protect people. We need to get stakeholders involved in this. We can all work together to get this done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntervention could make a difference (in saving lives),\u201d said Melanie Yazzie, a member of The Red Nation, an organization that advocates for Native Americans experiencing human rights violations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe support Harrison Begay\u2019s family in their efforts to find justice and change the landscape of health care for Native American people. I think there needs to be wide-spread pressure to (make change),\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Haley Leonard, a spokesperson for the Southwest Memorial Hospital, said that she could not comment because of the pending lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Based on an excerpt from the lawsuit, another hospital spokesperson wrote Herder, \u201cWe are unable to find any correlation between Mr. Begay\u2019s passing and the care he received at Southwest Memorial Hospital, Inc.\u201d The lawsuit requests a jury trial of six persons and an amount over $75,000. Sacks declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

SUBMITTED<\/p>\n

Harrison Mann Begay, 38, died at the Montezuma County Police Department in Cortez, Colo., from alcohol poisoning and potential complications from a head injury, according to a complaint. These events and others are detailed in the 40-page lawsuit filed last month by the family\u2019s attorney, Russell Sacks, of Albuquerque.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY COLLEEN KEANE SPECIAL TO THE TIMES ALBUQUERQUE – When Felicia Herder went to look for her older brother, Harrison<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16628,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16625\/revisions\/16628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}