He Shouldn’t Have Died In Jail

NEW JERSEY TRAGEDY –

July 27, 2023 – Somewhere along the line at Boston College, Odom’s not sure exactly when, her son started to spiral, first with signs of mental illness — schizoaffective disorder, she says — and then drug use. He became combative and argumentative and was eventually asked not to come back.

At home in Jersey City his mental health and drug use only got worse, and he found himself in and out of jail. Until May 24, 2022, when the 26-year-old didn’t come out of the Essex County jail.

“‘We are calling to let you know Kevin Bonners is dead,’ ” Odom recalls of the conversation with a representative from the Newark facility.

The official reason, the state regional Medical Examiner’s Office says, is accidental fentanyl intoxication — bad, or tainted drugs.

Odom and Kevin’s father, Kevin Bonners Sr., blame their son’s death on the negligence and incompetence at the jail. They have filed a federal lawsuit against the Essex County Department of Corrections (ECDC), the county, jail director Brian Riordan and warden Charles Green. The family is represented by Aymen A. Aboushi of the Aboushi Law Firm, based in New York.

“My first question was ‘How can he be dead when he’s incarcerated?’ ” Odom told The Jersey Journal. “My next question is ‘Did he commit suicide? Was he in a fight?’”

Bonners was found unresponsive in the shower, she was told. Bonner had been in the Newark facility approximately eight months after being transferred from Hudson County jail on what Odom said was a sex assault charge.

The 18-page lawsuit, filed earlier this month, says jail employees “knew Bonners was at a high risk as a result of his mental illness” and they “failed to adequately treat Bonners’ mental illness and failed to provide him with adequate care.”

Essex County officials declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on ongoing litigation.

The suit is demanding compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs, as well as a court order enjoining Essex County and/or its corrections department from “continuing its pattern and practice of violating citizens’ civil rights” and forcing the department to institute programs “to train, instruct, discipline, control, and supervise the officers” at the jail.

“It defies logic that we are imprisoning those who suffer from addiction only to find that illegal narcotics are just as accessible behind bars as they are on the street,” Aboushi said. “In this case, Mr. Bonners was in protective custody and still managed to acquire a lethal dose of fentanyl.”

The lawsuit attacks the jail for allowing drugs into the facility and creating the possibility that an inmate could take drugs and in Bonners’ case, die from them.

The suit alleges that Riordan, Green and others “were deliberately indifferent to the well-being of Bonners because they failed to adequately monitor and supervise his activities while in custody.”