Relative files suit over jail death

By Ed Runyan

YOUNGSTOWN — A relative of a 24-year-old Vienna man who died while in the Trumbull County Jail a year ago has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Department of failing to provide the necessary medical care to keep him alive.

The suit was filed by Daniel B. Border, administrator of the estate of Adam N. Border of Warren-Sharon Road, who died in the jail of an accidental drug overdose Jan. 13.

Adam Border was arrested at the BP station at state Routes 82 and 5 in Bazetta Township on Jan. 12 after he was accused of beating a 23-year-old woman at the gas station.

A Bazetta Township police report said Border met the woman at the gas station to apologize for something that had happened previously. The woman said she was assaulted at the service station.

Border had an empty pill bottle with the cap off when arrested, the report said, but the name of the prescription isn’t in the report.

Ernie Cook, chief deputy sheriff, said Border was discovered dead at 5:37 the next morning after he couldn’t be aroused when prisoners were awakened. He had been sleeping on a cot in the day room of the second-floor pod.

Corrections officers had last checked on him at 4:59 a.m.

The lawsuit, which seeks at least $750,000 in compensative and punitive damages, names as defendants the Trumbull County Board of Commissioners, Sheriff Thomas Altiere, corrections officers on duty that night, jail medical personnel and others.

The suit says the woman involved in the incident at the service station was Adam Border’s ex-wife, Lucenia Smith.

It says sometime before officers arrived because of an altercation between Border and Smith, Border took OxyContin and Valium.

It says a friend who accompanied Border to the service station advised arresting officers that Border may have taken an excessive amount of prescription pills.

Border “staggered around and appeared to be drunk and/or high” when he arrived at the jail at around 8 p.m., the lawsuit said.

Fellow inmates at he jail noticed Border slurring his speech and stumbling, the suit adds. One inmate saw Border having “severe hallucinations and [he] was making nonsensical statements,” the suit said.

A nurse advised corrections officers that Border “needed to be moved” because of his condition, the suit said, but corrections officers failed to do so.

Fellow inmates found Border dead at about 5:30 a.m., the suit said.

runyan@vindy.com