A 22-year-old Washington man locked up for a misdemeanor pot bust was left to die in his jail cell after guards ignored his food allergies, his family claims in a lawsuit.
Michael Saffioti begged for help from his cell at Snohomish County Jail after eating some oatmeal that triggered his debilitating dairy allergy on July 2, 2012, but was ignored by guards until it was too late, a video obtained by local KIRO-7 TV shows.
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Within a two hours, he was dead.
His family claimed in a $10 million lawsuit against the county that he told guards about his condition beforehand, but was told the food was safe to eat.
“Our theory is that they absolutely knew about Michael’s medical needs,” Cheryl Snow, an attorney for Saffioti’s mother, told the station.
“We know that he asked questions and made inquiries and he was assured the oatmeal in the food was safe for eating,” she said.
Saffioti, from the Seattle suburb of Mukilteo, suffered from a debilitating dairy allergy and severe asthma.
His allergy was so extreme, his family said, he had to ask a girl what she’d eaten before kissing her.
The day before he died, Saffioti had turned himself into Lynnwood police for missing a court date on a misdemeanor pot bust.
It wasn’t his first trip to the Snohomish facility.
The young man had abused drugs since his teens and had been in and out of jail and juvenile drug treatment programs, according to local reports.
His mom, Rose, said her son used pot and anti-anxiety meds to cope with stress related to his condition.
According to the family’s suit, Saffioti was assured he’d be placed in the Snohomish facility’s medical ward, where he’d been jailed before and where guards knew about his condition.
On previous stays, his food was prepared separately and wrapped in plastic to avoid contaminants, earning him the nickname “Bubble Boy” from fellow inmates.
Instead, he was placed in the general population.
“He was scared,” Rose Saffioti told The Associated Press last year. “I said, ‘You are doing the right thing. They are going to take care of you.’ He said, ‘I have a bad feeling that they are not going to take me seriously.'”
In the video broadcast on KIRO-7, taken from jail section E-4, Saffioti is seen talking with guards while holding a tray of food at around 6 a.m. on July 2.
Eventually, he joins other inmates at a table and takes a few bites of oatmeal.
A few minutes later, he is back at a guard’s desk, taking hits from an inhaler.
The lawsuit said he pleaded to see a nurse, but was sent to his cell instead.
In the video, he can be seen flailing around in his cell, and the lawsuit said he repeatedly hit his call button, but was ignored.
“This video shows Michael clearly made his needs apparent, that his needs were ignored,” Snow said. “Once he suffered distress he was further ignored.
Less than 40 minutes later, he was found unconscious in his cell.
Guards and medical staff pulled him out and performed CPR, but he was pronounced dead later at Providence Regional Medical Center.
The Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office determined he died from bronchial asthma brought on by his milk allergy.
Saffioti’s mother filed the $10 million suit in October contending there was a “systemic failure to provide adequate medical care” to her son.
It is the second multimillion-dollar claim filed this year related to a death at the jail, The Everett, Wash., the Herald newspaper reported.
The first, filed in March, claimed officials at the jail failed to provide adequate medical attention to a 27-year-old mom who died of a pulmonary infection at the jail in 2011.
In January, Snohomish County prosecutors announced they wouldn’t be filing any criminal charges in connection to Saffioti’s death.
With News Wire Services
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