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A new report by the Miami Herald revealed that Florida prison guards left a Black army veteran to die in 2017 after they broke his neck and walked past his cell over 170 times as the inmate pleaded for help.
According to the Herald, 62-year-old Craig Ridley was tackled to the ground face-first by a group of corrections officers. When Ridley told guards that his neck was dislocated, they mocked him and ignored his cries for help. All the while, Ridley was actually paralyzed, per the Herald.
Video footage published by the outlet shows Ridley in anguish as he struggled to hold his head up and lean his body in a wheelchair.
“You ain’t paralyzed,” a guard said to the inmate.
“You’re bullsh**ting… you’re just trying to get a lawsuit,” another told him.
Corrections officers chained Ridley and put him in a confinement cell, where he sat for five days unable to walk or pick up his food trays.
According to reports, prison staff walked past his cell about 170 times before one officer intervened on September 12, 2017. Ridley, who was serving a 20-year sentence for aggravated assault and criminal mischief, was taken to a hospital in Jacksonville and died a month later.
Details of his death remained undisclosed for years until the Herald unraveled a 383-page investigative report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement this week.
Ridley's death was ruled a homicide caused by "blunt impact" to the head and neck, a significant spinal cord injury, and “complications of quadriplegia,” but his sister, Diane Ridley Gatewood, said the prison told her he had died of cancer.
“This was an inhumane death caused by an abysmal lack of medical treatment,” Ridley Gatewood said. “It was torture.”
One guard was suspended for 8.5 hours without pay after walking past Ridley's cell 16 times and failing to provide aid or report that he wasn't eating. Two others had a letter of reprimand put on file for making inappropriate remarks to Ridley when his neck was dislocated.
No one was charged in connection to his death. Prosecutors concluded that corrections officers acted on the advice of medical staff.
Ridley's daughter, Jatoon Moss, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Florida Department of Corrections secretary and more than a dozen current and former corrections officers and medical staff.
“They think they’re above the system, and they can make this go away, but they’re wrong,” Moss said. “It’s not just my father. We have to get as much light as we can on this issue, especially for the Black community. My father was a Black man. I am a Black woman.”
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