A criminal who was jailed for torturing a student prisoner during a brutal five-hour theft died in custody after abusing narcotics and drinking illegal home-brewed alcohol.
On February 2, 2019, Kensington's dad Lee Thomas was discovered unresponsive in his cell at HMP Garth in Leyland, Lancashire. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) recently released a report that exposed several shortcomings, including an "unacceptable" 14-minute delay in calling an ambulance.
Although the exact medical reason for Thomas' death is unknown, toxicology investigations revealed that he had a deadly combination of alcohol, prescription medicines, and "psychoactive substances" in his system. PPO Sue McAllister expressed "concern" about Thomas' ease in obtaining illegal substances on the prison wings after hearing from a fellow prisoner who was said to be a close friend of Thomas that he had seen Thomas drinking the booze and "taking tablets."
After admitting to robbery and burglary, Thomas, 37, was given an extended sentence of 14 and a half years in prison with an additional three and a half years on license at Liverpool Crown Court in February 2018. The victim, who was then 26 years old, was encountered by Thomas and a second unknown guy, identified in court as Michael Andrews, in Kensington during the early hours of July 15, 2017.
The student had been out on the town but left his Fairfield, Connecticut, house in Elm Vale Road with plans to go to McDonald's for dinner when Thomas convinced him to join a party at his Kensington, California, apartment in Holt Road. However, prosecutor Louise McCloskey said in court: "Once inside, there was no drinking, there was no conversation, the door was closed, and Lee Thomas put his hood up, produced a metal bar and said to (the victim) 'you're going to die now mate'."
When the scared victim handed his kidnappers the $30 he had in his wallet, Thomas said they needed £1,000 or would murder him. Then Thomas and Andrews stripped him nude, bound his hands, blindfolded him with a T-shirt, and punched and struck him with unidentified things.
A threat was made against him until he disclosed his address after his wallet, keys, and credit cards were taken from his clothes. Additionally, he was compelled to phone his cousin and request that money be transferred to his bank account.
The student, who is black, was dragged into another room and placed on a bed before being subjected to horrific racial abuse and being threatened with having a knife "stuck up his a***." A third man, 32-year-old Giovanni Mercuri, showed up at Thomas's apartment shortly after the first.
Mercuri agreed to accompany Thomas and serve as a lookout as Thomas broke into the victim's home and stole an iPad and a laptop that contained crucial material for his studies, while afterward claiming to feel "sorry" for the victim. The two then went back to Holt Road, where Thomas began his terror campaign, which had now reached new and evil levels.
Ms. McCloskey told the court: "[The victim] recalled having something like oil poured on to his back and the sound of a lighter being flicked with the words' lets just burn him and leave him here'."
Thomas pushed the victim to get dressed and phoned a Delta cab so that he could take him directly to his bank after getting impatient with the failure to transfer money from the victim's account successfully. However, the student spotted an opportunity to flee and jumped out at a red light.
Despite only suffering minor bodily injuries due to his gruesome incident, the court heard that he was compelled to leave the city and his studies because of "severe psychological harm."
In August 2017, Thomas and Mercuri were detained. Mercuri was sentenced to three and a half years in prison after confessing to burglary and fraud. The court heard that Mercuri had been beaten in prison for helping the police.
According to his prison records, Thomas had a history of using psychoactive drugs when he was incarcerated, but he had turned down offers of support to cease using narcotics.
There were complaints of Thomas threatening other convicts and attempting to "tax" other inmates under his wing. Still, other staff members had portrayed him as a hard-working offender who rarely created any problems.
He had been confined in his cell at the customary hour of 5 p.m. on the day of his death, but a patrol officer discovered him slumped in a chair at 7:53 p.m. He was unresponsive when she tried to speak to him. When a fellow jail guard was called, neither of them unlocked the cell but instead radioed for aid.
According to the PPO report, seven minutes passed before an intervention team entered the cell door and discovered the inmate unconscious, vomiting in his mouth, not breathing, and with a flimsy pulse.
The crew radioed the prison's control center to seek an ambulance, but the operator misheard their request and didn't call for one until a staff nurse repeated it at 8.07 p.m.
At 8.33 p.m., the paramedics came at his cell; however, after doing CPR, they declared him dead at 8.47 p.m.
Ms McAllister wrote: "In total there was a delay of around 14 minutes from when Mr Thomas was first identified as unconscious until the ambulance service was contacted. While we cannot say whether an earlier call to the ambulance service would have made a difference to the final outcome, this was an unacceptable delay."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: "Our thoughts remain with Mr Thomas’s family and friends. We have implemented all of the Ombudsman’s recommendations and staff at HMP Garth have received additional emergency training."