Davidson (NC): Language, culture are barriers at jail

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Sunday, July 2, 2006
Tragic Details: Language, culture are barriers at jail

By Jessica Guenzel, Bertrand M. Gutierrez and Phoebe Zerwick
JOURNAL REPORTERS

A Death Behind Bars: Inside the Davidson Jail

This is the first of a two-parts series.

LEXINGTON

Six months after the beating death of a Davidson County Jail inmate, one
detention officer has been sent to prison and another is awaiting trial.
Brandon Gray Huie, 25, was sentenced Friday to 16 to 20 months in prison
after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Ronald Eugene Parker,
43, is scheduled to be in Davidson County Superior Court later this month.
Both men were charged with second-degree murder in April in connection
with the death of Carlos Claros Castro. In the courtroom Friday, his
beating death was presented in all its detail. On Jan. 6, Claros had
entered the jail on drunken-driving charges.  Less than 48 hours later,
paramedics found him lying in a hallway, covered in blood.

There had been a struggle over a mop, and a jailer had broken with
policies on use of force. During the court hearing, Claros' brother, Jose,
spoke about his mother's heartbreak. When it was over, bailiffs led the
convicted jailer away - back to the Davidson County Jail. Claros, a cook
in a Thomasville restaurant, came here illegally from Honduras in 2003.
His immigration status raised questions about the possibility of finding a
jury that would convict a law-enforcement officer in his death. Claros'
story represents more than the killing of a single inmate in a county
jail.

The Winston-Salem Journal spent two months investigating Claros' death.
The newspaper reviewed hundreds of pages of reports by the State Bureau of
Investigation, autopsy reports and other documents and interviewed many of
the key people involved with the case. What they revealed is a complicated
picture of an understaffed jail ill-equipped to cope with possible
mental-health issues or with the language barriers and cultural
differences created by the growing immigration population in Davidson
County. These shortcomings helped turn an altercation into a deadly
confrontation.

Booked early that morning

Claros, 28, was booked into the jail early that Friday in January. He had
driven a car off the road earlier that morning in Thomasville and police
charged him with driving while impaired, driving without a license and
leaving the scene of an accident. A magistrate set bond at $1,000. The
jailers put him in N-Pod, the low-security section reserved for people
charged with minor crimes. Sometime after breakfast, the guard working
N-Pod called for a supervisor.  Claros kept taking his clothes off and
refused to put them back on. "He was running around the pod naked," said
Beverly Cook, the lieutenant in charge of the day squad. "In the jail you
just don't do that." In English, she told him he had to keep his clothes
on. She said she wasn't sure whether he understood her.

Cook said she suspected that he was drunk or crazy, but there was no
mental-health staff in the jail to evaluate Claros, and no
Spanish-speaking staff to talk with him. Other county institutions have
made adjustments for Davidson County's Hispanic population, the fastest
growing in the region. The schools provide classes in English as a Second
Language. The churches, especially the Catholic churches, have Mass in
Spanish. But jailers are left to improvise. Parker, for example, often
called his wife at home to help translate if he had to book a
Spanish-speaking inmate. She had taken Spanish classes because she worked
with so many Spanish-speaking women at her job.

Cook often relied on other Spanish-speaking inmates to translate for her.
That morning she didn't have time. Two other jailers told Cook that the
other inmates were threatening to beat Claros up if they didn't move him
to another cellblock. When Claros shook a fist at her and blew snot in her
direction, she said, she decided to put him in a restraint chair used to
control disorderly or violent prisoners. "I don't like to do it unless
someone really, really pisses me off," Cook said.

The chair is made of molded plastic, with an indented space in the back
for an inmate's cuffed hands. Two straps run over the shoulders and across
the chest to hold the inmate in place. Another set of straps restrains the
legs. The jail-policy manual from 2001 sets out clear standards for its
use and the use of other restraints, in line with standards recommended by
the American Correctional Association. "Restraining devices will never be
used for the purpose of punishment,"  the manual says. "They shall be used
only for the prevention of escape, the protection of an inmate from
self-injury or to prevent an inmate from injuring others."

The manual also calls for prisoners in restraints to be monitored every 15
minutes. The standards by the association take that recommendation a step
further and require an evaluation by a mental-health worker. Cook told the
SBI that inmates are supposed to be allowed to leave the chair every two
hours to stretch and go to the bathroom. That didn't happen. According to
the SBI report, Claros spent more than four consecutive hours in the
chair, from 7:20 to 11:35 a.m.

SBI agents asked Cook why Claros was restrained for so long. "Like I told
the SBI, I don't know," she said. She said she remembers asking two other
officers working in the jail that day to put Claros in a cell where he
could be observed by the officer on duty in the watchtower. They found
room for Claros in cell 33 in P-Pod, one of three cells in the jail in the
direct line of vision of the watchtower. Cook said she thought that he
would be safe there.

A long way from home

Three years ago, Claros left Santa Lucia, Honduras, and followed his
younger brother, Jose, to North Carolina, on the same trail to the United
States that so many Hispanics have taken. They're part of the 55 percent
increase in Davidson County's Hispanic population from 2000 to 2004. More
than 7,000 Hispanics live in Davidson, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau. About 45 percent of the 600,100 Hispanics in North Carolina
crossed the U.S. border illegally. Claros tried to do it May 30, 2003, but
was caught by the U.S. Border Patrol in Falfurrias, Texas. He said he was
from Los Pinos, Mexico, an immigration official said in the SBI report. If
he had revealed his real home, he would have been sent back to Honduras,
making it that much harder to try another border crossing.

Shortly after he was detained in May, Claros crossed the border and made
his way to Thomasville. Until his arrest that January night, Claros worked
as a cook at Elizabeth's Pizza on Liberty Drive in Thomasville and shared
an apartment with three other men, a few miles from the restaurant. He
worked six days a week, a Honduran immigrant cooking up Italian
specialties. He would spend his day off with his roommates. They played
soccer, lifted weights or bought Coronas to drink back at the apartment.
Each month he sent $400 to Santa Lucia for his mother and two young
children.

His friends called him "Chato," a common nickname for people with flat
noses. Sometimes they just called him el hondureno, or the Honduran. He
was a jokester, they said. He made them laugh. He loaned them money. He
never missed work. Aldo Dipuerto had hired Claros to wash dishes at
Elizabeth's Pizza, and quickly promoted him to cook. He identified with
Claros, having been a young man looking for a better life for himself when
he moved to Thomasville from Italy 21 years ago. "Carlos did the same
thing like I did," he said. "He wanted to come here and make some money
and support his family."

Not himself at work

Claros went to work as he always did, about 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 5.
But he wasn't himself. Pasquale Astuzzi, the manager, found him in the
bathroom crying. He told his co-workers that he wanted to go back home to
Santa Lucia. He wanted to see his mother. He dreamed that she had died.
Astuzzi gave him the afternoon off. "I'm going," Claros told Francisco
Romero Argueta. "We'll see each other back in your country." Romero
understood. When he was still living in Honduras, Claros sometimes went to
work in the cornfields in nearby El Salvador, Romero's home. He and Claros
would talk about meeting up there some day, when they were both done with
the life of an immigrant and back home with their families.

Romero gave Claros a ride home, stopping for a 12 pack of Coronas. Later
that night, about 11, his roommates came home from the restaurant. They
could hear the beat of Ranchero music as they hurried through the rain to
the front door. It was wide open. So was the back door. Inside, Claros sat
alone in a corner of the living room. After another few rounds of drinks,
Claros asked his roommate Felipe Enriquez to take him to Piedmont Triad
International Airport in Greensboro. Enriquez agreed, even though, he
said, he thought it was strange. Claros seemed serious about buying a
ticket to Honduras that night. He didn't even pack a bag. He just wanted
to go.

It wasn't until the airport was in sight that Claros let Enriquez know
that it had all been a hoax. He was just kidding, he said. He wasn't
really flying to Honduras that night. As Enriquez turned the car around,
Claros asked, "Are you mad? Do you want me to walk home?" Enriquez kept
driving, stifling his frustration. When they got home, Enriquez went to
bed, but Claros stayed up. Shortly after midnight, Claros took a set of
car keys to another roommate's car, a 1997 Nissan, and drove down Liberty
Drive. He still wanted to party, and he was on his way to see Romero, the
friend who had driven him home from the restaurant. Claros didn't know how
to drive, and he didn't get far.

About a mile from his apartment, he drove off the road, ran over a small
retaining wall and came to a stop in Helen Wilson's front yard, at 802
Liberty Drive. The wreck tore up a flower bed in the corner of her yard,
but as she said later: "He didn't hurt anything. A yard you can replace."
Claros got out of the car and began walking away, leaving the car in
Wilson's front yard. Just then, Lazaro Lauro Morales, another friend,
happened to drive by on his way back from seeing a girlfriend in High
Point. He stopped to give Claros a ride. They didn't get far either.
Someone had called 911 and told Thomasville police about the wreck. Just a
few blocks from the place Claros had left the car, Officer Shawn Shoemaker
arrested Lauro and Claros. They were charged with leaving the scene of an
accident.

Claros took a Breathalyzer test, scoring .07, just shy of the legal limit
of .08. Nevertheless, he was charged with driving while impaired and other
driving offenses. Before taking the two men to the magistrate and on to
the jail in Lexington, Shoemaker took them back to Claros' apartment at 3
Liberty Drive to look for the owner of the car. It was well after midnight
by then. The roommates had already collected the wrecked car, and one of
them called Dipuerto, their boss, on his cell phone for help sorting out
the confusion. They needed an English speaker to help them deal with the
police. There was talk of releasing Claros to his friends, but they
decided that a night in jail might do Claros some good. "I said, 'Let him
go to jail. Let him think about his mama,'" Dipuerto said he remembers
saying. "The next day we go pick him up, either me or his brother."

A bad day for the sergeant

Sgt. Brandon Huie had a bad day that Friday, too. He was scheduled to work
that night but called in sick. Parker later told another officer that Huie
said he was having "emotional problems." His aunt had cancer, Huie later
told the SBI, and his grandparents were in failing health. He wanted to
call in sick on Saturday, too, but he was told he had to work because the
jail was so short-handed. "This is not a good night for me," he told a
co-worker that night, according to court testimony. To another co-worker
he said, "I am not in the mood to put up with anyone's b.s." That night
Parker worked the office. Gloria Parris worked the women's cellblock in
the old jail. Officer Larry Ellis worked the men's cellblock in the old
jail and Officer Mike Shell worked the watchtower.

There were 278 inmates at the jail. Huie was responsible for 192 of them.
Cleanup duty in P-pod fell to Teodoro Espino Aguillon, a 56-year-old
inmate who is awaiting trial on charges of attempted first-degree murder
and first-degree kidnapping, according to court papers. Espino had earned
the trust of the guards. At night, he would mop the catwalk outside the
cells and pass the mop to inmates, who were responsible for cleaning their
own cells. Claros shared cell 33 with Derrick Sorrell, another inmate whom
the guards wanted to keep a watch over. Espino handed the mop to Sorrell
through the bars. Sorrell started cleaning and asked Espino to tell Claros
to stop spitting on the floor. Espino translated for Sorrell.

"I don't take orders from him," Claros replied in Spanish, and spat on the
floor again. He reached for the mop and grabbed it from Sorrell. In the
commotion, another inmate called to the watchtower for help. Shell took
the call and speaking over the intercom, told Sorrell he would open the
door to cell 33. He told Sorrell to move into the cell next door. That
left Claros alone, locked in his cell with the mop. Shell called Huie and
told him about the problem in P-Pod. Huie later told SBI investigators
that he picked up a Taser, a weapon used to subdue inmates with an
electrical charge, and stashed it in the pocket of his cargo pants. In the
watchtower, Shell and two men working on the video-surveillance system
watched as Huie approached cell 33. They saw Claros crouching on the top
bunk, mop in hand, as if he were ready to pounce.

Then they heard Huie's voice over the intercom. "Are you going to give my
mop handle back to me?"

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