Report: St. Louis jail nurse accused dying inmate of faking leukemia symptoms days before he died

CLAYTON, Mo. — Newly-released reports on the March 2019 death of a Missouri inmate show he was given little to no medical care for weeks and was accused of faking symptoms of the leukemia that ultimately killed him.

Lamar Derell Catchings, 20, was found dead in his cell March 1, 2019, in the St. Louis County Jail. He had been jailed for nearly a year on an assault charge at the time of his death.

An autopsy found Catchings had undiagnosed leukemia, probably acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).

“The guards told him, ‘Quit acting like a baby,’” Catchings’ mother, Tashonda Troupe, told KMOV last year. “So, that left my son to go in that cell and just endure this pain on his own.”

“I would have given anything just to hold him and help him through his pain,” Troupe said in a statement. “They ignored him and left him to die an inhumane death, which to me is criminally negligent.”

“They watched a 20-year-old boy die,” Troupe’s attorney, Mark Pedroli, told the news station.

Pedroli filed a lawsuit last April on Troupe’s behalf, seeking records that jail officials were refusing to make public in Catchings’ death, as well as two other jail deaths. He said Friday that he plans to file a federal lawsuit in the coming weeks regarding Catchings’ death.

“This report confirmed what I always felt, and that is that my son’s death could have been prevented. And he should be here alive with me,” Troupe told St. Louis Public Radio station KWMU of the internal investigative report, a copy of which Pedroli provided to Cox Media Group.

Jail and county officials came under fire after Catchings became the third inmate to die in the St. Louis County Jail in the first three months of 2019. Two more men died in custody later in the year, according to KWMU.

The jail and county were placed under new leadership in the spring, the radio station reported. Since then, multiple jail staff members have been disciplined or fired over the inmates’ deaths.

By all accounts, a blood test could have diagnosed Catchings’ leukemia. According to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, advances in diagnosis and treatment have made APL, the type of leukemia that killed the young inmate, the most curable form of adult-onset leukemia.

“Cure rates of 90 percent have been reported from centers specializing in APL treatment,” according to a fact sheet on the society’s website.

The American Cancer Society states, however, that prompt diagnosis and treatment is important because patients with the disease can quickly develop life-threatening bleeding problems and blood clots.

According to Catchings’ autopsy report, he had clots in his bloodstream when he died. Dr. Mary Case, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last April that the clots had caused damage to his lungs and liver.

“It’s a complicated case because we weren’t expecting this until the microscopic examination came back,” Case told the newspaper. “You couldn’t (see the damage) by grossly looking at him and his tissues and organs.”

Case said someone with APL would be “desperately ill” and would typically seek medical care.

‘I need to see a doctor’

According to police reports and the internal investigative report, Catchings did seek care but his requests saw little action. Clayton police officers were called to the county jail shortly before 6:30 a.m. March 1 after guards found Catchings unresponsive in his cell.

Paramedics performed CPR but Catchings was already dead and had been for hours. The police and investigative reports indicate rigor mortis had set in by the time he was found.

Catchings’ body was discovered in his bed after he failed to stand at his door as required for the morning head count, jail officials said.

A night shift lieutenant told police Catchings had complained of a stomach ache and heartburn a few nights before he died and had been given acetaminophen and an antacid.

Multiple inmates told investigators, however, that Catchings had been sick for weeks, too ill at times to walk on his own. He had been moved from an upper-level cell to one on the ground floor because he had complained of stomach pains and dizziness and guards were afraid he would fall down the stairs.

When a corrections officer entered Catchings’ upper tier cell on Feb. 26 to inform him of the transfer, Catchings “stood up from his bed and vomited,” the internal report says.

Despite that incident, jail officials determined he did not need to be taken to the infirmary, according to the document.

One jail official asked Catchings why he was just hearing about Catchings’ illness. The inmate told him he’d given a guard a sick slip several days before, the report states.

Catchings was also too weak to walk for his final court appearance a week before he died.

“Inmate Catchings was waiting in the sally port and shared he wasn’t feeling well, felt dizzy and didn’t believe he could walk to the courtroom,” a lieutenant told internal investigators.

Jail authorities put Catchings in a wheelchair for his trip to court. Courtroom video obtained by the Post-Dispatch shows him hunched over in a wheelchair in the courtroom.

He struggled to stand up as the judge entered the courtroom, the video shows.

“Look at him,” a tearful Troupe said last year after watching the video with a Post-Dispatch reporter. “He’s rocking, he’s not feeling good. He’s in pain.”

An inmate who spoke to a Post-Dispatch reporter described for the newspaper Catchings’ final weeks of life. Desean Pitts, also 20, said in a jailhouse interview that Catchings, who was in the cell next to his, had told him his eyes and ears hurt, he had pain down one side of his body and he’d lost the ability to hear in one ear.

Catchings would remain in his cell during the times when inmates could congregate in a common area, Pitts said.

An investigator who canvassed C Pod, where Catchings was housed before he died, heard similar stories from several inmates who noticed that Catchings was not leaving his cell or eating. At least one inmate told detectives Catchings asked for help the night he is believed to have died.

“I need to see a doctor,” he was heard yelling from his cell on Feb. 28, according to the police report.

Another inmate told authorities “everybody knew (Catchings) was sick,” according to the police report. The man told detectives he saw Catchings standing at his sink the night he died.

He “explained L. Catchings walked back to his bed, looked up and fell. (The inmate) explained he did not know if L. Catchings fell because of pain or if he was working out,” the report says.

On both Feb. 18 and Feb. 22, the date of Catchings’ last court appearance, he complained of headache, nausea and vomiting, a jail nurse told the medical examiner. On Feb. 26, three days before he was found dead, he said he was weak, dizzy and had a burning sensation in his chest, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Medical records from a visit to the infirmary that day indicate Catchings’ gait was unsteady, the newspaper said. No blood was found in his vomit or stool and he had no visible injuries, according to the medical examiner’s report.

Though a jail nurse said they’d had problems with heroin and fentanyl being smuggled into the facility, no drugs were found in Catchings’ system or in his cell, according to the paper.

‘There’s nothing wrong. He’s (expletive) faking.’

A nurse also admitted to investigators that he’d believed Catchings was not really ill. On Feb. 26, when the inmate vomited as guards arrived to transfer him to a bottom tier cell, a lieutenant asked the nurse for his opinion on Catchings’ condition.

“Mr. (redacted) replied, ‘There’s nothing wrong. He’s (expletive) faking,’” the report states.

Catchings was never scheduled to see a doctor. At least two guards told investigators, however, that they’d noticed Catchings was seldom eating his jail-provided meals. His purchases in the commissary, where inmates can buy snacks and other items, had also gone down drastically as he became sicker.

The investigators found that guards had not been adequately performing their twice-daily head counts. Staff and inmates explained that the proper protocol required getting inmates to stand next to their cell doors in the morning and in the evening to ensure everyone is accounted for.

The night Catchings died, inmates were not made to stand at their doors, so it is unknown if Catchings was already unconscious or dead at that time, the report says.

The report on Catchings’ death is not the only internal review that found inadequate medical care in the jail, according to KWMU. Investigators looking into the other four deaths in the jail last year found that jailers failed to address one inmate’s health crisis with a “sense of urgency” and violated another’s right to health care.

In the June 11, 2019 death of a third inmate, Daniel Stout, a correctional officer “was not receptive to the inmate’s concerns and failed to take necessary action as required to maintain a safe, secure and humane environment,” the report in that case says.

Stout, 31, died within an hour of being transferred from county jail to the state prison system, the radio station reported. According to the Post-Dispatch, he died of peritonitis caused by an ulcer that had perforated his intestine.

After arriving at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Stout told guards he had not had a bowel movement in eight days, the newspaper reported. KWMU reported that Stout, who had been vomiting, asked to see a jail nurse multiple times before he was put on a transport van to prison.

Stout did not complain of pain upon intake at the Bonne Terre facility but vomited blood resembling coffee grounds -- a sign of internal bleeding. His condition quickly deteriorated and 911 was called 34 minutes after his arrival at the prison.

Paramedics performed CPR but he could not be revived, the Post-Dispatch said.

Besides Catchings and Stout, the jail deaths included Larry “Jay” Reavis on Jan. 18, John Shy on Feb. 23 and Jo’von Mitchell on Dec. 27. Reavis and Shy died in their cells at the St. Louis County facility, while Mitchell died after being transferred to a hospital.

KWMU reported that all five inmates who died sought medical help prior to their deaths but did not receive it. Reavis, who died of liver disease brought on by alcohol abuse, was shaking so badly before he died that he could not hold a cup to drink from, the report says.

According to the Post-Dispatch, an inmate working in the infirmary told a guard that Reavis, who was detoxing from alcohol, thought he’d had a seizure.

“I don’t know about that,” the guard responded, according to the newspaper.

Hours later, Reavis, 51, was found dead, face down on the floor of his cell.

Reavis was one of the more high-profile inmates who died in the county jail last year. The 51-year-old was former assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s St. Louis Division, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Shy, who died of an intestinal hemorrhage, had been taken twice to a hospital for stomach pain but was returned to his cell the same day. The 29-year-old was screaming, crying and begging for help for about seven hours prior to his death, KWMU reported.

The Post-Dispatch reported last year that internal investigators were looking into why nurses who saw a pool of blood in Shy’s cell told him to clean it up and shower rather than offer him medical aid. Investigators were also trying to determine if jail staff members had disabled the call buttons in the infirmary, the newspaper reported.

Mitchell, 31, was too sick to visit with his brother and nephew Christmas Eve, KWMU reported. When he was sent to the infirmary the following day, he stumbled out of his cell and had difficulty walking.

The Post-Dispatch reported he complained of a headache Christmas Day and later lost consciousness. He died two days later.

As of last month, the medical examiner had not ruled on Mitchell’s cause of death.

KWMU reported that a corrections officer was chastised in the internal report on Mitchell’s death because he took the time to finish his rounds before calling for help after he found Mitchell unresponsive in his cell. The guard falsified his report to indicate he responded immediately, but surveillance footage from inside the jail proved otherwise.

Despite the problems found in the handling of last year’s jail deaths, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney declined to bring criminal charges against any of the guards or nurses involved.

“You have to have the elements of a crime,” Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell told the Post-Dispatch last May. “You have to have the guilty act, the guilty mind, the correlation and causation. You can’t get away from that. Now on the civil side, that’s different.”

Reavis’ widow, Tamara Reavis, filed a federal lawsuit in her husband’s death in October. According to court records, the case is in mediation.

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