POTTSVILLE, Pa. — Vincent Davalos arrived at the Schuylkill County Prison at midafternoon one warm, late spring day in 2020.
Five hours and 20 minutes later, the 25-year-old Pottsville man was dead.
How it happened isn’t disputed: Davalos swallowed three Ziploc bags holding the lethal opioid fentanyl, and one of them opened in his stomach.
However, the question of whether jailhouse staff and Schuylkill County bear legal responsibility will be decided by a federal magistrate judge.
The county and its employees at the jail filed a motion for summary judgment Wednesday in a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by Davalos’ mother. The lawsuit alleged her son’s jailers denied him medical care in the moments before his death.
The lawsuit also named the jail’s medical provider, PrimeCare Medical, Inc., and two nurses as defendants. A judge declined to dismiss counts against PrimeCare last year.
“Despite the documentation of recent drug use and the direct observation of Mr. Davalos’s rapidly deteriorating physical condition during his first hour of incarceration...Individual Defendants did nothing, provided Mr. Davalos no medical care, and did not place Mr. Davalos on watch or in any form of observation,” Wilkes-Barre attorneys Barry Dyller and Chad Sweigart said in a complaint. “Instead, Individual Defendants sent Mr. Davalos to an unmonitored cell in general population with the cell door shut…and left him there to die.”
In response, the county argued that the evidence shows no one at the jail knew the danger Davalos faced when he arrived at the gates.
“Although he admitted upon admission to the Prison that he had taken 0.5 grams of heroin earlier that day and appeared to be under the influence of that drug, there can be no dispute: Davalos never informed any Prison or PrimeCare staff member that he had ingested three bags of fentanyl, the act which ultimately caused his (death).”
Frackville police arrested Davalos on June 9, 2020 because he took off from a motel when they responded to investigate a report of a man beating a woman there.
Davalos led them on a chase in a U-Haul before he crashed into a ditch. Davalos was under the influence of methamphetamines and heroin.
However, he also at some point swallowed three plastic bags that contained fentanyl.
Unable to post bail, a local magistrate remanded him to the county jail.
Davalos arrived shortly after 3 p.m. He appeared unwell and signaled he had trouble breathing, according to the lawsuit. Unsteady, he leaned on lockers, a bench and the walls for support as he moved through intake.
Dyller and Sweigart accused the staff of ignoring his “spiraling condition.” A nurse gave him Tylenol and recommended he increase his fluid intake.
They did not move him to medical care for observation, despite his erratic behavior, the lawsuit contended. Instead, they escorted him to a cell in general population. Davalos leaned on a corridor wall the entire way to the cell block.
The cell door locked around 4 p.m. Dyller said Davalos showed signs of having a seizure in his cell. Staff gave him smelling salts and then left him alone, the attorney said.
The lawsuit argued that no one checked on him until well after 7 p.m. when staff discovered him unresponsive and not breathing.
The totality of jail staff's actions made it “predictable” that someone would die, Dyller said.
“And that’s what happened,” Dyller said.
The attorneys listed as representing the county and PrimeCare did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
In court filings, the county denied Davalos’ condition deteriorated and said that witnesses to his condition testified that they thought he just needed supportive custody and care.
The county also denied that they failed to monitor Davalos. The warden’s investigation found that jail staff monitored him during hourly cell checks and there was no evidence that those protocols were violated.
At 7:42 p.m., a correctional officer found Davalos lying unresponsive by his cell door. More officers and nurses responded. They started performing chest compressions until emergency medical workers arrived and administered three rounds of epinephrine — adrenaline — to try and rouse him.
No luck.
Davalos went by ambulance to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pottsville, where a physician pronounced him dead at 8:31 p.m., five hours and 20 minutes after he first arrived at the jail.
“Had the County and PrimeCare Properly trained their employees in dealing with emergency medical situations such as overdoses, Mr. Davalos would not have died,” Dyller and Sweigart wrote.
