After a man died while inside the Tarrant County Jail, the county reached a settlement of $400,000 to be paid to the victim’s mother.
Dean Stewart, 50, was found dead on April 26, 2020, of an apparent suicide, after being moved to a special suicide prevention cell.
Following a state investigation, the court decided that the Tarrant County Jail was negligent in providing adequate supervision for Stewart prior to his death.
According to police reports, Stewart was arrested on April 5, 2020, after shooting a firearm at another person following a road rage incident. The victim was uninjured.
Stewart’s actions reflected a possible mental illness, as the lawsuit alleged the incident resulted from “paranoidal delusions concerning a car he thought was following him.”
The brother of Stewart explained that the police were already accustomed to Stewart’s long history of mental illness issues.
“It wasn’t like he was a crazy person. When he was on his medication, you would never know. How could they? Why would they have put someone in jail knowing that this was his situation?” his brother said.
While speaking to his mother in jail, Stewart allegedly further exhibited signs of paranoia and claimed that there were people out to kill him.
The lawsuit found that jailers placed Stewart in a suicide prevention cell but did not put him under suicide watch.
A state investigation, initiated after similar alleged cases of neglect arose in the Tarrant County Jail, discovered that jailers were late to multiple face-to-face observations of Stewart.
In three instances, the jailers failed to check on Stewart completely. Due to this, the jail lost its Texas Commission on Jail Standards certificate for six days in May 2020.
Guards at the Tarrant County Jail had allegedly been nonchalant about Stewart’s death, commenting that “things happened, that’s the way it is,” and that the jail simply “was just understaffed and undertrained,” according to the lawsuit.
It is unknown whether or not any of the responsible jailers will face any repercussions as a result of the settlement.
