More than 15 months after he thought he was going to die alone in a jail cell, a California student has reached a lucrative settlement with a federal agency.
Daniel Chong, a student at the University of California, San Diego, reached a $4.1 million settlement with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after being left alone and handcuffed in a holding cell for nearly five days without food or water, his lawyers announced Tuesday.
According to Reuters, Chong filed a $20 million claim against the DEA in the aftermath of his stint in the cell, during which he said he drank his own urine to live. His lawyers, Eugene Iredale and Julia Yoo, said Tuesday they had settled that claim.
Chong, who has returned to school since the incident, endured days of harsh conditions in the cell after he was taken into custody during an April 2012 drug raid at a San Diego house suspected of dealing ecstasy. He had given up hope of surviving, using a fragment of his glasses to carve a goodbye note reading “Sorry Mom” onto his arm, before authorities found him in the 5-by-10-foot cell containing no toilet and no windows but a peephole, according to CNN.
“This was a mistake of unbelievable and unimaginable proportions,” Yoo said on Tuesday.
Chong made many attempts to call out for help, he told CNN affiliate KSWB. It’s still not known why no one heard him.
“I was screaming. I was completely insane,” he said to KSWB.
According to Reuters, after the raid, nine people, including Chong, were detained. A narcotics task force found 18,000 ecstasy pills, along with a slew of other drugs and weapons in the house, where Chong was visiting a friend. Iredale said that after authorities concluded he was not involved, an officer put Chong in the cell, saying, “We’ll come to get you in a minute,” Reuters reported.
But by the time he was found nearly five days later, Chong was enduring severe dehydration, muscle deterioration, hallucinations, liver and kidney failure and high sodium levels, his attorneys said.
Shortly after his release, William R. Sherman, the head of the DEA’s San Diego office, said in a statement he was “deeply troubled by the incident that occurred here.”
The DEA has since implemented a policy that requires prisoners to be monitored daily, Yoo said to CNN. A DEA spokeswoman also told CNN that a review of DEA procedures was carried out and handed over to the Department of Justice’s inspector general’s office.
“To its credit, the government has responded by acknowledging responsibility, apologizing personally to Daniel and instituting changes in policies regarding safety checks for prisoners in temporary holding cells at DEA facilities,” Iredale said. “What happened to Daniel Chong should never happen to any human being on the face of the planet.”