A Lewiston woman has filed two lawsuits — one in state court and one in federal court — over the death of her 25-year-old son while he was incarcerated in the Androscoggin County Jail. She's accusing the jail's for-profit health care provider of negligence. And she's alleging that the sheriff and more than a dozen corrections officers subjected her son to a "cruel and unusual death" by allowing a treatable infection to progress to the point of incapacitating him.
When Trevor Saunders began a 45-day sentence at the Androscoggin County Jail in October 2023, his mother, Pam Ashby, said she thought it might be a wake-up call, a chance to get his life back on track. He'd been athletic, personable and a hard worker, she said, someone who was always on the go. But a year-and-a-half earlier, he'd had a rare, spinal stroke, which limited mobility on his left side. Ashby said it also affected his spirit.
"Trevor always had a little bit of anxiety," she said. "But the spinal stroke definitely did a number on his mental health. I feel like there was depression and just struggles with, you know, having to live a very different life than what he was used to."
After that, Trevor made what she calls some "poor choices." He got into a car accident and was arrested for operating with a revoked license and driving under the influence of alcohol.
According to the complaint, when he was booked into the jail, he reported his stroke and limited mobility to the medical department. He relied on braces to prevent muscles in his left hand from retracting. But jail policy prohibited him from using them while he was incarcerated. As a result, the complaint alleges that he couldn't use his left hand to prevent or properly care for bed sores that he developed.
"People that have experienced strokes are prone to bed sores and he developed one fairly quickly," Ashby said.
On November 1, Trevor reported to medical staff that he had two sores on his buttocks. He also told his mother that staff did not understand the nature of his disability. So Ashby called the medical department and offered to provide them with Trevor's medical records. According to the complaint, she was told by a medical staff member she could drop them off. That was on November 2.
"I brought them, gave them to the person at the jail and it is my knowledge that they said they don't know where they went and no one saw them," Ashby said.
In fact, the complaint alleges that no one at the jail ever provided the records to the medical department so they were never reviewed.
Over the next two weeks, Trevor's condition worsened. By now, according to the lawsuit, he was complaining of acute wound pain as well as pain in his chest and upper back. His heart rate was abnormally high and he had diminished breath sounds. A nurse determined that he was "demonstrably stable despite the stated symptoms" and suggested that he was likely suffering from anxiety. Ashby said the last time she spoke with him was around November 12.
"He seemed a lot more defeated than usual. Was down. Said his entire body hurt. He didn't feel good, you know. And I just, not even expecting the worst case scenario which is where we're at right now, just attributed it to...poor sleeping arrangements," Ashby said.
The complaint alleges that over the next two days, Trevor lost his ability to walk independently. He spent much of the time in his bed moaning for help. His cellmate and other block mates tried repeatedly to alert jail staff to Trevor's declining health.
It goes on to say that on November 14, a nurse in the medical department determined that Trevor's wounds had become a medical emergency but the health services administrator for the Androscoggin County Jail (ACJ) and Correctional Psychiatric Services (CPS) refused to authorize outside treatment because of a "custom and practice of discouraging staff from sending inmates for outside medical care because of the high cost of doing so."
"We certainly have reason to believe that one of the CPS jobs at the ACJ was to keep costs low for the county," said Rosie Wennberg, an attorney representing Pamela Ashby on behalf of her son, Trevor.
"He could not walk, he could not eat, he could not urinate. He certainly couldn't care for himself. And it is our allegation that the medical staff neglected his medical needs and that the ACJ corrections officers essentially acted with deliberate indifference towards his medical need," she said.
Wennberg said three days before he died, Trevor was evaluated by a physician assistant who prescribed an antibiotic and documented that he could have rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening condition in which damaged muscles release toxins into the bloodstream, or sepsis, an inflammatory response to infection that can lead to organ failure or death.
"Those are both life threatening conditions that require immediate investigation and care, and the fact that the provider's course of action was simply to order labs and then check on how he's doing the next time that she would be at the jail, which would have been a week later, is, is pretty galling to me," Wennberg said.
On the morning of November 17, Trevor fell out of his bed and hit his head on a desk. But according to the complaint, no steps were taken to get him emergency care. Instead, he was moved by wheelchair to an observation cell with a cement bed raised just inches off the floor and a plastic mattress on top of it. He was allegedly so weak that he couldn't turn over on his side or drink from a cup. The next night, around 8:00, he was found unresponsive on his bed. Ashby was notified of his death a couple of hours later.
"My main question was, how could this happen? The officer that notified me said it could have been something as simple as choking on a cup of coffee, a sip of coffee, which obviously to me was extremely dismissive and added to the traumatic, you know, news," Ashby said.
An autopsy later determined Trevor's death was caused by complications from pneumonia that the complaint alleges resulted from his infected bed sores. He left behind a young son who is now eight years old and a mother who said she wants to make sure that everyone who enters the jail is safe.
"I don't understand how many people can just ignore all of the signs of someone needing help," she said. "Trevor was not safe. He died, not as a result of a physical altercation, but he died of an infection that was preventable and that is a safety issue."
The federal lawsuit alleges that the defendants have a "custom and practice of minimizing, neglecting or altogether ignoring ACJ inmates' serious medical needs including baselessly accusing inmates of faking injuries or illnesses and "contracting with inadequate and incompetent medical providers."
Attorney Rosie Wennberg said she's learned of other instances that suggest what happened to Trevor is not an isolated incident.
In announcing Trevor Saunders' death on November 19, 2023, the Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office said, as part of protocol, the Department of Corrections would conduct an independent investigation. The results, according to a department spokesperson, are confidential.
Neither the sheriff nor someone from CPS could be immediately reached for comment.
