The family of a man who died from severe head injuries shortly after his booking into the Vista Detention Facility filed a lawsuit this week against San Diego County, the city of Escondido, and members of the jail’s medical staff.
Jose Ramon Cervantes Conejo, 43, was hospitalized shortly after his March 28, 2024, arrest and remained in the hospital in a coma for about two weeks before dying.
The lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of his family states that a jail deputy told hospital staff that Conejo “rolled off the bench in his cell,” but the lawsuit alleges that per a doctor who examined him, the severity of his head injuries — including a skull fracture — were “not compatible with a simple fall and seemed more traumatic.”
The complaint alleges multiple other possibilities are more likely to explain Conejo’s injuries, including potential excessive force by Escondido police officers who arrested him or that the injuries occurred by other means while in custody, such as at the hands of other inmates, or that Conejo was placed in a top bunk and fell.
The lawsuit references other high-profile San Diego County jail deaths or injury cases such as Frankie Greer, who was placed in a top bunk while suffering from a reported seizure disorder, then suffered a serious head injury after falling from the bunk. Greer sued the county and the case later settled for $7.75 million.
Conejo was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and was “suffering from acute alcohol intoxication” at the time he was booked into jail, the complaint states. The lawsuit says jail staff were informed that he was intoxicated, had a history of excessive alcohol abuse and suffered from seizures.
Conejo’s family alleges that a jail physician determined Conejo was suffering from alcohol withdrawal and that according to jail policies, he should have been placed in specialized housing or taken to an acute care facility, rather than to “remain in the unsafe housing which threatened his health and safety.”
Like other lawsuits filed in recent years over in-custody deaths, the complaint notes the high frequency of fatalities within the county jail system, which led the California State Auditor to conclude there were “deficiencies with how the sheriff’s department provides care for and protects incarcerated individuals (that) likely contributed to in-custody deaths.”
That audit examined 185 deaths within the San Diego County jail system from 2006 through 2020, a rate that exceeded all of California’s other large counties during that time period.
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