The family of a 35-year-old Black man who died at the Fulton County Jail says they want the facility shut down and replaced.
Meanwhile, Fulton County officials have already started planning for a new $2 billion jail almost four times the size of the overcrowded facility on Rice Street.
Lashawn Thompson is a 35-year-old man who died at the Fulton County Jail in September 2022. His family says they want the facility to be shut down after he was found covered in bed bugs. (Courtesy of Attorney Michael Harper)
At a press conference across the street from the Fulton County Superior Court on Thursday, April 13, Lashawn Thompson’s family said he was suffering from mental illness when he died under brutal conditions.
The family’s attorney, Michael Harper, said Thompson was found dead in his cell in September 2022 after being “eaten alive by insects and bed bugs.”
“They put that man in that cell,” Harper said, “left him there to die, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Harper said Thompson had been arrested for a misdemeanor three months before he died and that he was placed in the psychiatric wing of the Fulton County Jail, where he was supposed to be checked on every two hours.
But, newly obtained records allegedly show detention officers and medical staff did little to help Thompson. Harper said he had been physically healthy when he entered the jail. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office listed his death as undetermined.
“There is no way that this man was being monitored every two hours,” Harper said. “It seems like he wasn’t monitored for months. His body was riddled with insect bites and his whole body was filled with these sores. It’s just a despicable display.”
Thompson’s younger brother, Brad McRae, said he was on his way to work last year when he received a phone call that Thompson had been found…
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