James Lebomski
Appearances
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
He was in the process of doing a strip search before entering the prison. He was trying to get him to put his clothing back on.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
Ishmael was having some difficulty understanding the sergeant who was giving him orders for the time.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
Ishmael enters the shower and starts to shower. And the sergeant tells him multiple times, look, you can't shower now. You need to get out. You have an opportunity to shower later. You need to get out. and Ishmael refused.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
They're working on trying to secure Ishmael, which was difficult because you have somebody who is wet and soapy, right? And Ishmael had been sprayed, so he's now saying that he's having a difficult time breathing.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
And that's what he was doing. So as he's doing that, somebody said, told him to stop spitting.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
Which looks like a cheesecloth style hood. So if anybody spits... The spit won't actually go through the little tiny holes, but it has a bunch of little holes in it, so it's supposed to allow you to breathe. In theory.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
And during all of this, there were multiple times when Ishmael was saying he can't breathe.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
Some of the comments coming back from the supervisor was, well, if you're talking, you're breathing. So just keep breathing, which isn't part of the policy and also isn't necessarily correct. Then a couple of the staff members wheel him back in the chair into one of the holding cells that are in the booking area. And they tell medical that it's now time for them to come in and check him.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
They checked the handcuffs. They kind of checked his fingers. There wasn't any kind of communication at all. And then he left. James didn't train the medical staff.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
He looked exhausted. His head was hunched over a little bit, and he could tell that he was having a difficult time breathing. I do remember that it became less frequent, and he just looked defeated. So it went from saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, to just not saying anything.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
And they called for medical, they said medical emergency.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
So they tried to remove him from the chair, and that was difficult because they didn't put him in the chair properly to begin with. So whenever they tried to undo the restraints, the restraints were twisted up.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
It was irritating the medical staff as they were trying to provide him care.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
It made me sick. This is something that should not have occurred for a number of reasons. What made many of us upset was that had the policies and procedures that were in place been followed to the letter, it might not have happened. I remember feeling like I sat there and I watched my staff kill somebody. And that's how I felt. And that's horrible for me to say.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
We would have weekly meetings. There would have been director and all the other directors and the warden. So in the next weekly meeting, the one topic was Ishmael.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
And I remember the then-director saying, instructing the warden to determine who needs to document where people failed policies or procedures or failed whatever it is that that needs to be documented. Whether that be a disciplinary report, a counseling slip, something, something needed to happen that documented that the administration knew that errors were made in that incident.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
And this is at least documented that we're addressing it. We're going to try to address it.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
The response from the warden at the time was, well, I spoke with some of them, and I don't think that's the right course of action, so I didn't do it.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
The result was that there was nothing documented that any of these individuals had done something incorrectly. Basically, I was confused, upset, concerned. Like, I came in here and I did what I was asked to do, and the result is nothing.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
And then I remember going, well, if this is where we're at, now, you know, what do we do next?
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
I even asked... pardon my French, but what the hell is a medical incident? Like, really? That's so vague. Like, what does that mean? So that kind of let me know that the original report that had come out was something that was supposed to appease the community, that, you know, we know that he had died of a medical incident, okay, without giving any information at all.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
I don't want to call it necessarily atonement. I don't know if I have something to atone for. But I do know that Ishmael's family, they should really know this is what happened to their loved one. And I don't know if they were going to get that kind of information from anyone else who was still there.
Death County, PA
Speaking for the Dead | 2
But I do know that it's the right thing to do so that the family can have some knowledge of this is what happened.