ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 25, 1997 TAG: 9704250069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS|
A fellow Goochland prisoner said that when she and another inmate reported the woman's problems, nurses dismissed the symptoms as unimportant.
Nurses at the women's prison in Goochland failed to assist an inmate shortly before she hanged herself, even though she was shaking and her eyes rolled back in her head, said an inmate who watched from outside the woman's cell.
Audrey C. Berryman, 34, serving five years on bad-check convictions in Richmond and Chesterfield County, hanged herself April11 even after having been put in a strip cell under close watch while considered a suicide threat.
The Department of Corrections is conducting an internal investigation of Berryman's death, spokesman David Botkins said.
Inmate Demetrius Lambert said she and her roommate were sweeping the hall in the ``dungeon'' - the basement in maximum-security Building 3.
Lambert said her friend went into Berryman's cell to clean it ``and she ran out to get the officer because the girl was there shaking.'' She said Berryman was naked in a cell with a surveillance camera.
The guard on duty in the basement called for medical help. Two nurses arrived and talked with Berryman, then dismissed her symptoms as inconsequential, Lambert said.
``When the nurses came out they said she did it the week before, and it wasn't anything the matter with her,'' according to Lambert. ``The nurses said it was up to mental health [staff workers] to do something.''
The guard, however, ``got very upset and said she hadn't seen the girl like this before, because her eyes were rolled up in her head,'' Lambert said.
Prison warden Wendy Hobbs refused to let a reporter talk to the officer or nurses.
Lambert said she went upstairs to sweep the first-floor hall about 20 minutes after the nurses checked Berryman.
``Then there was this chaos, and they started running everybody to our rooms,'' she said in a phone interview. ``Somebody from downstairs hollered and said Audrey had tried to kill herself. We still didn't know that she had killed herself.''
Later, a prison captain came through the building and told inmates, ```A girl just got what she wanted,''' Lambert said.
Botkins said it is almost impossible to prevent a prisoner from committing suicide: ``Historically, corrections professionals have learned that an inmate who is bound and determined to kill themselves regardless of supervision can and will kill themselves.''
Inmate Tawanna Shorter said that Berryman was despondent because her parole request had been rejected. ``I was with her when she got her parole downturn. She was devastated.'' Shorter said Berryman told her that she had suffered from manic depression since childhood.
Lambert said Berryman hanged herself by tearing a strip from a gray wool blanket and tying it to a crossbar on her cell door.
Robert Holloway, administrator of the state medical examiner's office, said Berryman died from ``ligature strangulation,'' or hanging.
Lambert said Berryman was not supposed to have the blanket while on suicide watch in her ``strip cell.''
When Lambert and her roommate had seen Berryman that morning, there was no blanket in the cell, she said. Lambert is serving time for selling cocaine and is to be released Nov.21.
Last May, Del. Marian Van Landingham, D-Alexandria, called the basement unit where Berryman was held a `dungeon' for the mentally ill.
Prison officials said the area is for inmates who pose a threat to themselves or others, and denied that it was inhumane or that it resembled a dungeon.
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