Sheriff’s deputies and medical staff at the Vista jail missed multiple chances to save Gilbert Gil’s life, a new filing in his family’s wrongful death lawsuit argues.
According to an amended complaint filed Thursday in federal court, surveillance video of Gil’s cell shows multiple deputies, a nurse and a mental health liaison ignoring clear signs of Gil being in medical distress.
“At one point, another inmate gained the attention of an unknown Defendant Deputy, alerting the Deputy that Mr. Gil was sick and in need of medical attention,” the lawsuit says. “The Deputy ignored the inmate and continued walking without intervening or summoning medical attention.”
Two deputies faced disciplinary action for failing to conduct mandatory safety checks, the lawsuit says.
A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said she could not comment on Gil’s death because of the family’s lawsuit, initially filed in May 2023.
At a press conference earlier this month, Sheriff Kelly Martinez, who was elected in November 2022, said safety and security in the county’s seven jails were among her highest priorities.
“We recognize that one death is too many and remain committed to protecting the health and safety of those in our care,” she said.
Gil died in the Vista Detention Facility on Feb. 14, 2022. The 67-year-old was suffering from early-onset dementia exacerbated by uncontrolled diabetes, his family says, when he was booked into the jail late on Feb. 13, suspected of being under the influence of methamphetamine.
He had never been in trouble with the law before, his daughter, Jennifer Schmidt, told The San Diego Union-Tribune in an interview shortly after her father’s death.
Schmidt described Gil as a “superhero” and master mechanic who was always there for her and her twin sister, Lyndzy. He was especially fond of his grandchildren.
“I know that if he didn’t go to jail, he’d be alive today,” she said.
Gil was initially arrested and taken to jail the evening of Feb. 12 on suspicion of driving under the influence of meth after he drove his car into a ditch in Escondido.
When Schmidt picked him up from jail the next morning, he could barely walk and was struggling to speak, she said. He was yelling for his mother, who had died recently, and didn’t seem to understand what had happened to him.
Schmidt said she cared for him as best she could and took him back to the apartment he shared with his brother.
That night, he again started acting strangely, the lawsuit says, again asking for his mother and failing to recognize his brother.
Gil’s nephew called 911. Escondido police officers showed up and arrested Gil for being under the influence of a controlled substance but first took him to Palomar Hospital.
Gil refused certain medical tests, records show, and was released from the hospital to the jail, but with a note from an emergency room doctor asking deputies to return him to the hospital if he kept having chest pain or heart palpitations.
But during intake, the nurse who evaluated Gil failed to place this alert in his record, the lawsuit says.
Surveillance video of the jail’s intake area shows him “sitting down, slumping over and shaking,” the lawsuit says. A check of his blood sugar showed a level of 253 — more than twice the normal level. He was given five units of insulin and placed in a holding cell, the lawsuit says.
Gil was so unsteady that deputies needed a wheelchair to take him to the cell.
Jail protocol requires medical staff to check on diabetic patients every three hours who have been administered insulin. According to jail medical records, no one checked on Gil between the time he was given the insulin and when he was found unresponsive in his cell 14 hours later.
The lawsuit argues that because Gil was booked for being under the influence of meth, he should have been put in a sobering cell where he would have been more closely monitored. Instead, he was placed in a general population cell.
Surveillance footage of the cell shows Gil appearing confused and disoriented. Five hours after he was placed in the cell, the footage shows him removing his pants and defecating on himself, the cell floor and a sink.
“Mr. Gil then fell over in front of the cell door,” the lawsuit says. “At that exact time, surveillance footage confirms (a deputy) was in the adjacent holding cell and observed Mr. Gil fall.”
The deputy “did not intervene and did not summon medical care,” the lawsuit says.
An hour later, a nurse came by the cell to conduct what jail records describe as a welfare check.
The nurse “observed Mr. Gil was unresponsive, confused, shaking, unstable, and covered in feces” but also did nothing, the lawsuit says.
Over the next nine hours, nine deputies looked through the cell’s window, but none entered to check on Gil.
Surveillance video shows that when a deputy conducted a safety check at 5:32 a.m., Gil was slumped over and gasping for air.
He was discovered dead 30 minutes later.
Gil’s autopsy attributed his death to heart disease, with diabetes, methamphetamine toxicity, dehydration, liver disease and pulmonary emphysema all listed as contributing conditions. A toxicology report found a small amount of methamphetamine in his system.
Schmidt said her father had used meth to get through the work day, but she believed he had stopped using the drug after he retired. For months, she said, she had attributed his erratic behavior to early signs of dementia.
Gil died 11 days after the California state auditor released a scathing report on conditions in San Diego jails.
“The high rate of deaths in San Diego County’s jails compared to other counties raises concerns about underlying systemic issues,” the report said.
Among other things, auditors found “deficiencies related to its provision of medical and mental health care and its performance of visual checks to ensure the safety and health of individuals in its custody.”
In reviewing surveillance video from 30 deaths in San Diego jails, auditors found deputies often performed inadequate safety checks.
“We observed multiple instances in which staff spent no more than one second glancing into the individuals’ cells, sometimes without breaking stride, as they walked through the housing module,” the report says. “When staff members eventually checked more closely, they found that some of these individuals showed signs of having been dead for several hours.”
The county’s Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board has also faulted the Sheriff’s Office several times in recent years for failing to conduct proper safety checks.
Danielle Pena, the attorney representing Gil’s daughters, described the 14 hours of video footage from Gil’s holding cell as “deeply disturbing.”
“Over those 14 hours, Mr. Gil was vomiting and shaking uncontrollably,” she said. “The footage shows not one person rendered aid.”
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