California Man Left for Days in Holding Cell Without Food or Water
LOS ANGELES — By his own admission, Daniel Chong planned to spend April 20 like so many other college students: smoking marijuana with friends to celebrate an unofficial holiday devoted to the drug.
But for Mr. Chong, the celebration ended in a Kafkaesque nightmare inside a San Diego Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell, where he said he was forgotten for four days, without food or water.
To survive, Mr. Chong said he drank his own urine, hallucinated and, at one point, considered how to take his own life. By the time agents found him on the fifth day and called paramedics, he said he thought he could be dead within five minutes.
To survive, Mr. Chong said he drank his own urine, hallucinated and, at one point, considered how to take his own life. By the time agents found him on the fifth day and called paramedics, he said he thought he could be dead within five minutes.
‘By that time, I’d accepted that I would probably die there,’ Mr. Chong, a 23-year-old student at the University of California, San Diego, said Wednesday, three days after his release from the hospital.
A spokeswoman for the D.E.A. said the case was under investigation, but confirmed that Mr. Chong had been ‘accidentally left in one of the cells’ from April 21 until April 25, and that he had not been charged with a crime.
This is completely inexcusable. It’s hard to believe that this wasn’t intentional. Daniel Chong is going to get one hell of a settlement when this case goes to court.
Eugene Iredale, one of Mr. Chong’s lawyers, said he planned to file a claim against the federal government, and, if that is denied, a lawsuit.
“How they failed to realize he was there or ignored him is beyond comprehension,” Mr. Iredale said.
No kidding.