MIAMI - The Brevard County Sheriff's Office, Armor Correctional Health Services and more than a dozen individuals employed by either face a wrongful death lawsuit recently moved to Miami federal court.
The entire list of defendants includes: the Brevard County Sheriff's Office; Sheriff Wayne Ivey; deputies Darrell Hibbs, Kelley Haman, George Fayson, Richard Zimmernan, Robert Wagner, Freddy Cedeno and Allison Blazewicz; Armor Correctional Health Services and its Brevard County Sheriff's Office physicians Dr. Jose J. Armas and Dr. Jorge Gillette; and Armor Correctional Health Services Brevard County Sheriff's Office LPNs Debora Nadeau, Ayana Robinson and Yolanda Jones.
According to the December lawsuit filed originally in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Gregory Edwards, a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was arrested in the parking lot of the Walmart on Bay Road NE in December 2018 after experiencing a mental health episode.
Despite the apparent need for emergency medical evaluation of Edwards' mental state as described by the West Melbourne Police Officer who brought Edwards in, Deputies Zimmerman and Wagner booked the man into the Brevard County Jail on a Sunday, when there is not staff available to provide immediate emergency mental health care, the suit alleges.
As a result of being booked into the jail and his mental health emergency being neglected, Edwards' state deteriorated while being detained in a jail cell, the suit says. When Edwards was removed from the cell to finish his booking process, a scuffle with a deputy allegedly morphed into approximately nine deputies piling onto the man, taking turns in using force to strike him.
Edwards was also tasered six times and pepper sprayed in the incident, the suit says. He was then placed in a restraint chair and fixed with a spit-mask, the suit says. He was allegedly then put into a cell alone and unmonitored.
The suit says that Edwards slowly suffocated to death due to the restraints, the spit-mask and the trauma he had endured at the jail.
Edwards' wife, Margarita Rodriguez-Bonilla, is suing the defendants for objectively unreasonable force, deliberate indifference to serious medical needs, supervisory liability, duty to intervene, monell, willful and wanton negligence, negligence, wrongful death and vicarious liability. She is requesting declaratory judgement as seen fit.
The plaintiff is represented by Jacob Litigation of Mechanicsburg, Pa., and Ben Crump Law PLLC of Tallahassee.