Anson County jail staff skipped required checks hours before inmate died, state says
Records from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services show that Anson County jail staff weren’t following safety regulations when a 28-year-old inmate died in August.
The North Carolina Administrative Code requires jailers to check on each inmate at least twice per hour on an irregular schedule, with no more than 40 minutes between visits, then document their observations in writing.
But a DHSS investigation file obtained by The Charlotte Observer indicates that in the hours before Shaquille Polk was rushed to a local hospital, officers did not follow those rules.
Four years in jail
Polk was confined in the Anson County Jail from October 2018 to his death, where he was awaiting trial on a murder charge. He maintained his innocence in the fatal shooting of 43-year-old Tywan Sturdivant but was held without bond, court records show.
Other than working through the lengthy process of getting the undiagnosed man legally recognized as mentally disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty, Polk had few worries in his first few years behind bars, his family said.
But starting in July, Polk’s family members say he and they begged Anson officials for medical help. No one knew what was wrong with Polk but he was unable to eat and worried as his weight plummeted by 45 pounds in just a few weeks, according to his family.
In early August Polk called his aunt, Brenda Polk, telling her he’d finally seen a doctor and gotten shocking news: his blood sugar had spiked to “545 or 565,” over five times the level considered normal by the American Diabetes Association, she said.
When Polk’s relatives went to visit him at the jail on Aug. 27, Brenda Polk said they were turned away from seeing her nephew because he was too ill to see them.
Citing a state-required inmate death report that Anson County provided to DHHS, a state investigator noted that Polk was “found in distress” at 9:29 p.m. that night, and that he died at 8:56 a.m. the next day.
Polk was brain-dead by the time he arrived at Atrium Health Union in Monroe, a doctor told Polk’s aunt, she said. Weeks had passed since she first recalled him complaining about the mysterious symptoms.
What happened?
Polk was moved to a holding cell on Aug. 22, the state records reveal, though the reason why is redacted from the DHHS records released to The Observer.
One document notes that two attorneys visited Polk on Aug. 24, and at least one returned the next day. That lawyer, Jeremy Smith, asked an officer what was wrong with Polk but the officer said they couldn’t release inmates’ medical information, the document says.
“We can’t see him like this, he is not able to answer our questions or say too much,” Smith told the guard, according to the DHHS document.
Polk had a doctor’s visit the day before his death and agreed to start a medication, the name of which is also redacted in records. Polk requested a single cell with a bed, and was escorted to an empty room with the doctor’s approval, the jail log states.
After that log note at 4:40 p.m. on Aug. 26, the only mention of Polk in the records DHHS released is a partially blacked-out note from 4:45 p.m. on Aug. 27. “Shaquille Polk [redacted] called [redacted],” it reads.
At three different times on Aug. 27 – in the 5 a.m., 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. hours – officers made just one round to check on Polk instead of the required two, DHSS records show. In addition, supervisors on four rounds ignored the requirement to wait no more than 40 minutes between rounds, leaving gaps of 66, 58, 47 and 56 minutes, a DHSS investigator wrote.
The jail report listed Polk’s cause of death as “natural,” according to DHHS records.
Jail ‘deficiencies’
DHHS notified Anson County Sheriff Landric Reid of “deficiencies” in the jail’s facilities on Sept. 21 by email, and demanded a plan for corrections submitted within a month.
Reid died unexpectedly the day he received that message. But a later email indicates that his replacement, Sheriff Scott Howell, submitted a plan. And that the state’s Chief Jail Inspector Chris Wood deemed the plan acceptable, pledging to verify the details during the next semiannual inspection, according to emails obtained by The Observer.
It’s unclear whether the cited “deficiencies” extended beyond the jail’s failure to maintain standard inmate supervision practices. A report outlining the inspection’s findings that was referenced in the email was fully redacted from the DHHS response to the Observer’s request for public records.
Family still has questions
The information hasn’t answered all of the Polk family’s questions, Shaquille Polk’s aunt Brenda Polk told the Observer.
She wants to know why her nephew wasn’t taken to a hospital earlier. And given that the report confirms that officers noted his condition deteriorating well before midnight on Aug. 27, she wonders why her family wasn’t notified that he was taken to a hospital until the next day, just a few hours before he took his last breath.
Polk said that Sheriff Reid called her just after the death promising a thorough investigation but declined to answer any of her questions. He never contacted her again before he died on Sept. 21, she said. Nor has his successor, Sheriff Howell, she said.
Howell has not responded to the newspaper’s requests for comment.
Whatever information the jail provides, is unlikely to relieve her grief, Polk said. One detail keeps her up at night: the timing of his hospital trip. If officials noticed her nephew in “distress” by 9:30 p.m., why did it take until 4 in the morning for authorities to tell his family that he was in the hospital?
“This is somebody’s life,” Polk said, stating a serious suspicion. “In Anson County, you have to be dead before you see a doctor.”
This story was originally published November 28, 2022 at 5:55 AM with the headline "Anson County jail staff skipped required checks hours before inmate died, state says."
