A woman was found dead at Santa Rita Jail on Saturday morning, according to an Alameda County Sheriff's Office press release. The woman was identified as 36-year-old Dequita Grace Harrell of Oakland. She was found unresponsive in the women's restroom in the public lobby of the jail around 5:25 a.m. Deputies attempted life-saving measures and requested emergency personnel, but Harrell was pronounced dead at the scene.
For an hour and 21 minutes, Jose Pina Cardenas gasped and writhed on the floor of his Santa Rita Jail cell with a plastic wristband lodged in his throat, according to a federal lawsuit filed by his five children. But instead of helping him, multiple Alameda County sheriff's deputies allegedly dismissed his distress as talking and falsified a colleague's initials on a cell-check log, according to the lawsuit. His cell went unchecked for 52 minutes, the lawsuit claims.
DUBLIN A Tracy man has agreed to an eight-year prison term for beating a fellow Santa Rita Jail inmate so badly that the victim's eye fell out, court records show. Michael Angel Rodriguez, 50, pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon in a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors, court records show. The prosecution dropped a felony mayhem charge against him, and a judge has set his sentencing date for Nov. 5.
OAKLAND Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson plans to dismiss charges against 8 of the 11 people prosecuted in the death of Maurice Monk, who died in 2021 after languishing for days in his Santa Rita Jail cell, Monk's sister said Wednesday. The decision which is expected to be finalized at a court hearing Thursday morning marks the latest instance of Jones Dickson scaling back the work of her predecessor, Pamela Price.
Brown suffered the first of many seizures in Santa Rita Jail when she was 20. During her incarceration, she'd passed out in her cell dozens of times, lost the use of her legs and repeatedly begged to go to a hospital.