A Barstow man died after half a year in jail with no trial. Now his family plans to sue San Bernardino County for 'justice.'

A 29-year-old Barstow man was going on seven months of confinement without a trial when he died in one of California's biggest county jails for reasons that remain murky.

Now, family members are preparing to file a lawsuit in December with high-profile legal backing. Their targets are San Bernardino County, its sheriff's department and the Rancho Cucamonga-based West Valley Detention Center.

Their allegation: The law-enforcement system killed Isaiah Hernandez-Sanchez by depriving him "of his rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, including his right to adequate conditions of confinement and necessary medical care," according to a claim for damages that the family's attorney filed in San Bernardino County on Wednesday.

Later that day, family and friends organized at West Valley to protest at the site of Hernandez-Sanchez's death. They displayed a variety of old photos and donned signs with phrases such as "Justice 4 Isaiah" and "West Valley killed my brother!"

In a separate move on Wednesday, a county judge dismissed all charges — to which Hernandez-Sanchez had pleaded not guilty — posthumously under California's "interest of justice" provision, according to court records.

The family's claim adds another chapter to the case.

Hernandez-Sanchez's mother, Cynthia, and a guardian acting on behalf of his two young daughters, Andrea Baker, are the named claimants. Representing them is Ed Lyman, an attorney at The Cochran Firm, which is based in Los Angeles and named after late founder Johnnie Cochran.

The claim accuses the county, sheriff's department and jail of denying Hernandez-Sanchez his prescribed diabetes and mental-illness medications, obstructing his communication with family, and allowing guards to target him with abuse, mockery and neglect.

The family argues that county authorities knew — or at least, had a legal obligation to know — this alleged treatment "would result, and did result, in the loss of his life."

By enabling such treatment, it continues, the family now faces "substantial economic and noneconomic damages," such as "loss of support, loss of past and future earnings," costly expenses and emotional suffering.

San Bernardino County and the sheriff's department declined to comment on "this pending litigation" for this story.

To sue the government in California, Lyman said one first has to file a claim with the relevant county and wait 45 days from that time.

"Once the County rejects our claim, we will file a civil rights action in federal court to hold the sheriff's department and its officials accountable for killing Isaiah," Lyman told the Daily Press.

'He looked like an old man'

Barstow Police Department arrested Hernandez-Sanchez on March 4.

Lyman said the arrest resulted from an "altercation" Hernandez-Sanchez had while "suffering from symptoms of high blood sugar" with his younger sister, Emma, who called Barstow Police.

Hernandez-Sanchez's older sister, Erica, said she asked one of the officers why he was carrying a shotgun upon their arrival, according to Lyman. "My brother is just mentally ill," she said.

The officers arrested Hernandez-Sanchez after they found him "hiding in his bed, under the covers, crying," according to Lyman. Erica says she explained to them that her brother was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and multiple mental illnesses that required a few medications, but the officers "brushed her off."

Erica called the Barstow Police station later that night to reiterate her concerns and asked to bring his medication in, but she said the station rejected her offer.

Barstow Police declined to comment for this story.

She then learned Barstow Police had transferred Hernandez-Sanchez to the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, placing him into sheriff's department custody.

On the day of his arrest, according to court records, the county District Attorney's Office filed two felony charges against Hernandez-Sanchez for "criminal threats."

California law says threatening "death or great bodily injury to another person" is a felony "even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out," so long as it causes a person "to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety."

This felony is punishable by no more than one year in a county jail or state prison, the law states.

The DA's office sought an enhancement of the punishment in Hernandez-Sanchez's case to what would likely be a sentence of between 25 years and life in prison with a conviction. Court records show that the county alleged he had violated California’s "Three Strikes" law, which says anyone with two "violent" or "serious" felony convictions on their record must face a 25-year to life sentence for any additional felonies they go on to accrue.

Aside from the charges issued last March, the Daily Press could not identify any felony convictions or charges against Hernandez-Sanchez in San Bernardino County Superior Court's electronic records database. It is possible such records exist in a different jurisdiction.

County records do show that Hernandez-Sanchez's mother, Cynthia, obtained a two-year restraining order against him in 2016 over domestic violence-related concerns that did not involve children. No felonies appear to have been involved in that case, however, and Cynthia is now one of the claimants seeking accountability for her son's death.

For the first week after Hernandez-Sanchez's arrest, his mother and older sister said they "repeatedly called" High Desert Detention Center and asked to bring his medications in, but they said they were rejected and told "their brother was fine and would be taken care of."

A week into his detainment, Hernandez-Sanchez "called to inform his family he had been transferred to the West Valley Detention Center," Lyman said.

West Valley is one of the largest county-level jails in California, according to its website. It has a payroll of more than 600 employees and books between 50,000 and 60,000 people each year.

For half a year from that point, the family said it called West Valley "on an almost daily basis" to reiterate their medication concerns. In response, "staffers purported to have checked up on Isaiah and reported that he was healthy and doing fine," Lyman said.

Hernandez-Sanchez painted a different picture when speaking directly with his family. He said the jail was not providing him his medications, causing him to face untreated diabetes symptoms such as:

• An inability to keep food down without vomiting on himself
• An inability to control his bladder, leading him to soil his pants and bed
• Developing an untreated infection on his foot, and struggling to walk.

"The guards would ridicule him for peeing on himself and the bed," according to Erica, Hernandez-Sanchez's older sister.

She said she last saw Hernandez-Sanchez at a Sept. 7 hearing. She "could hardly recognize him."

"My brother was pale. His eyes were glazed over. He had lost weight. He looked like an old man," she said in a statement shared by Lyman. "But the Deputy kept pushing him along."

Hernandez-Sanchez told his family the jail denied him a wheelchair upon requests, adding that he "had to borrow a cellmate's wheelchair just to get to the phones."

His family members said their final call with Hernandez-Sanchez came on Sept. 13, two days before his death. He said, in slurred words, that "this was the last time he could ever call" given the difficulty he faced reaching the phones. They then said their goodbyes.

'Constantly shielded'

Hernandez-Sanchez first appeared in court on March 8. He pleaded not guilty to the felony charges and asked the court to deny the county's request for a "Three Strikes" enhancement.

Judge Joseph Widman set a $200,000 bail for him in response, according to court records. The family said it could not afford such a cost.

The first in a slew of pretrial hearings occurred on March 16, but Hernandez-Sanchez was not present for his defense that day. Instead, authorities kept him at West Valley "in quarantine until to be determined for the health and safety of all involved," according to court records.

A public defender attended the March 16 hearing on Hernandez-Sanchez's behalf. A few weeks later, the Barstow resident retained private attorneys Melvin Betnun and Roger Chien, who were relieved June 30. The defense then returned to a different public defender.

Proceedings were suspended at least twice — on May 10 and Aug. 2 — when the court declared doubt about Hernandez-Sanchez's mental health potentially invalidating the county's prosecution.

But the court ended both suspensions by declaring him mentally competent and finding good cause to continue the proceedings, first on June 7 and then on Aug. 30.

Roughly two weeks after that second reinstatement of proceedings, Hernandez-Sanchez died.

The sheriff's department announced his death on Sept. 20, five days after it reportedly occurred. It said deputies responded to "a possible medical emergency" and found Hernandez-Sanchez "unresponsive on his bunk" in West Valley at about 10:40 a.m. Sept. 15.

Hernandez-Sanchez was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, according to the department, which did not identify the hospital.

The sheriff's Specialized Investigations Division took over the death investigation soon after it occurred. An autopsy to determine the cause of his death was conducted by the county Coroner's Division, which is part of the sheriff's department.

The family said sheriff's Det. Cory Drost and Sgt. Joseph Steers informed them of Hernandez-Sanchez's death at their home a day later, on Sept. 16.

The officers "were accompanied by a supposed supervisor from the West Valley Detention Center who interrogated the family about what medications Isaiah was treated with," Lyman said. But the officers told the family a toxicology report was still in the works and shared little detail on how Hernandez-Sanchez perished.

Family members said that last week, on Oct. 7, they spoke again with Steers. Hernandez-Sanchez's mother, Cynthia, alleges that the sergeant "told me that he knows we have a lawyer and he's not threatened."

The claim filed by the family does not blame specific individuals for his death.

Rather, it accuses an unlimited number of "unknown individuals" — including deputies; directors; independent contractors and third parties performing services for the county; the sheriff's department and West Valley.

Lyman told the Daily Press the county coroner has not provided him or the family any autopsy results, "and I doubt they will." He added that attempts by public officials to delay or hide documentation of in-custody deaths are a broader problem.

Lyman referenced another in-custody death at West Valley this year that he is currently fighting in federal court, saying he requested documents under the California Public Records Act six months ago and still has not received a response in that case.

"This information is constantly shielded from these families and the public at-large, so we have attorneys working at the county level that are breaking the law too," Lyman said. "I think a lot of the time, people forget who they work for."

Charlie McGee covers the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities for the Daily Press. He is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.