Family of Daniel Foard files lawsuit after his “gruesome” death
The family of Daniel Foard, a 32-year-old who died in a southwestern Colorado jail, has filed lawsuit in the wake of his “gruesome” death.
The family of a Colorado man whose final minutes saw him cry for help as he was throwing up blood in a southwestern Colorado jail filed suit against the county and the jail’s medical provider on July 21.
The estate of Daniel Foard called the 32-year-old’s 2023 death at the La Plata County Jail “gruesome and entirely preventable” in a complaint filed in the United States District Court for Colorado.
“The final 15-plus hours of his life were dominated by terrible pain and suffering, including his expressed and doubtlessly terrifying consciousness of his impending death,” the complaint reads.
Jail cell video obtained by USA TODAY shows Foard throwing up coffee-ground like vomit and begging officers for medical attention. Foard died from acute peritonitis due to a perforated duodenal ulcer, according to the complaint.
“We spend a lot of time thinking about deliberate indifference and it’s a really, really hard concept to explain,” Dan Weiss, one of the estate’s lawyers told USA TODAY in an interview ahead of the filing. “This case right here is one of the clearest illustrations of that concept we have ever seen.”
The lawsuit names La Plata County, the county’s Sherriff Sean Smith, the jail’s medical provider Southern Health Partners, and eight nurses and jail employees as defendants.
Ted Holteen, a spokesperson for La Plata County, told USA TODAY in a statement the “county has not analyzed the allegations made in the complaint” and that it does not comment on pending litigation.
USA TODAY reached out to the sheriff and Southern Health Providers ahead of the filing and did not receive a response.
“Our pain of loss is immeasurable, but we know that the path forward must lead to healing, to resolution, to something that allows us to take a deep breath and feel a sense of closure,” Jim Foard and Susan Gizinski, Daniel’s parents, said in a statement provided to USA TODAY. “Without any accountability for what happened to our son, there can be no closure.”
August 2023: Daniel Foard enters La Plata County jail
Foard was booked into La Plata County jail on August 11, 2023. He was being held on warrants for failure to appear, a jail supervisor told the Durango Herald at the time of Foard’s death and the estate’s lawyers confirmed in the interview.
Foard told nurses at the jail that he regularly took fentanyl pills during the intake process and was placed in the jail’s detoxification program.
During his time in the program, he had some vomiting and diarrhea that soon went away. But an elevated heart rate, fast breathing and high blood pressure continued, according to the complaint.
During a routine body scan around 9:45 p.m. on Aug. 15, 2023, before he was to be moved to general population housing, Foard collapsed to the floor multiple times, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that a jail deputy mouthed to another that Foard was “faking.”
Later that night, nurse Ashley Box concluded that Foard was stable and could be transferred to general population. He was moved to the jail’s G block, according to the complaint.
USA TODAY reached out to a publicly listed phone number for Box and did not receive a response.
Deputies tasked with escorting Foard told Box that he was “really struggling.” Box responded by asking, “what do you think?” The complaint alleges that Box did not go to see Foard or relay his condition to a doctor.
“Box chose to rely on a medically untrained Deputy to tell her how her patient was doing, but then disregarded what she reported,” the complaint reads.
The next day: Foard’s condition worsens
The next morning, on Aug. 16, 2023, Foard fell into his cell door twice when he went to retrieve breakfast, according to the complaint. A deputy asked him to step out to be seen by the jail’s medical personnel.
“Over the course of the (previous) night, he vomited repeatedly and continually complained of stomach pain,” the complaint reads. “He called deputies from the cell’s call box several times, telling them that he was sick, his stomach was hurting, and that he wanted to be seen by medical.”
The complaint notes that the last time Foard’s vital signs were taken was 3:27 a.m., around the time he was moved into general population.
When he stepped out of the cell, he was only able to take a few steps before needing to sit on the ground because “he obviously could not safely ambulate, stand, or maintain balance,” the complaint states.
The lone registered nurse in the jail at the time, Sierra Snooks, responded the call for help. She charted that Foard reported an intense, “sharp” and “shooting” abdominal pain that was a “10” on a 1-10 scale, according to the complaint. Foard told her that the symptoms did not feel like those from withdrawal.
Snooks told Foard that she was initially concerned about appendicitis, but that she had decided that the pain wasn’t in the right place to be appendicitis, so they would “monitor” him in the jail’s booking area.
The complaint states that registered nurses are prohibited by licensure from diagnosing or ruling out appendicitis. It alleges the symptoms reported by Foard required Snooks to call a doctor, and that she did not.
“Ten-out-of-10 sharp, shooting, and persisting abdominal pain is unquestionably a serious medical emergency. These symptoms mandate immediate provider involvement,” the complaint reads.
USA TODAY reached out to a publicly listed email for Snooks and did not receive a response.
Foard was moved by Snooks to the jail’s booking area for medical monitoring. The complaint alleges the medical monitoring never happened.
“Snooks did not even communicate with any of the Deputies why Mr. Foard was being moved back to be monitored,” the complaint reads. “The next time a nurse came to see him he was dead.”
Daniel Foard’s final hours
Foard was placed in Holding Cell 4 around 7 a.m. on Aug. 16 and continued vomiting through the day.
By 6 p.m., Foard was moved to Holding Cell 5 due to vomit in the first cell. Snooks left the jail in a shift change around 6 p.m., with Box coming on duty.
Foard was seen pouring the soup he had been served into cell’s the toilet, drinking the mixture and regurgitating it immediately, according to the complaint.
By 6:40 p.m. Foard was moved to Holding Cell 6, once again for vomit. He is seen on video crawling into the cell and falling to the floor.
Foard continued to call for help, including cries of “vomiting blood” and “I’m in a lot of pain” that are heard on the cell video. He also yelled, “I’m gonna die,” according to the complaint.
A jail sergeant is heard on video telling Foard to hit the grate in the cell because they, “can’t keep switching (him) out to clean.” The sergeant later told Foard, “I don’t know if you can comprehend what I’m saying…I can’t just jump every time…if you keep yellin’. I hear you, but there’s not a whole lot I can do.”
The complaint alleges that Box did “walk-bys” of Foard’s cell but did not assess the inmate as he was crying for help.
At approximately 9:49 p.m., Box banged on the door of Holding Cell 6 to no response. When deputies opened the door, they found Foard dead in a pool of his own bloody vomit, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit says an autopsy found Foard had “a liter of cloudy brown fluid in his peritoneal cavity,” stomach fluid in his respiratory system, and that his stomach contained dark brown fluid.
Foard was found to have fentanyl still in his system, Mike Arnall, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, told the Durango Herald at the time, but said that “the greater problem was a belly full of pus.”
“As the surgeon would say, that’s a surgical problem with a surgical cure – meaning there’s only one way you’re going to cure that, and that’s with surgery,” Arnall told the newspaper.
Lawsuit points at jail’s medical service provider
Documents included in the filing show that Southern Health Partners was chosen by La Plata County after significantly underbidding its competitor.
The lawsuit quotes a 2023 email from La Plata County Sheriff’s Office Detentions Division Commander Ed Aber that reads: “I have done some informal cost comparisons with other service providers that meet medical needs in other Colorado Jails, and our contracted price is significantly lower.”
The lawsuit points to five instances of jail deaths where Southern Health Partners were responsible for staffing, calling the medical provider and the county’s practices “unconstitutional.”
Anna Holland Edwards, a lawyer for the family, said the cost-cutting provider is a symptom of a larger disregard for inmate medical services.
“For-profit healthcare is bad and complicated in a lot of ways anyway,” Holland Edward told USA TODAY in an interview ahead of the filing. “But for-profit healthcare where the consumer is not the patient, it just leads to this recklessness over and over again because the person paying is prepared to cut some corners.”
Foard’s parents said they want to see changes in the way inmates are treated at La Plata County jail.
“Just basic training in having compassion for others would be a great start. But adding more staff is critical too,” their statement reads. “More medical staff and a physician on-site would be beneficial, along with proper training. If Deputies are going to continue being used to monitor sick inmates, they must be trained also.”
“These elementary steps would have saved our son’s life,” Foard’s parents said.
