E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSView more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com.
A North County lawyer is furious after being trapped and forgotten inside a local jail for hours.
Attorney Erubey Lopez spoke to NBC 7 about the ordeal for the first time Friday.
Lopez said it all began when he was trying to visit a client in jail on Tuesday. He went into a visiting room -- not knowing he would be trapped in there for hours.
Patiently waiting inside a locked visiting room, Lopez said he didn’t think anything unusual until a half hour passed and his client still hadn’t been brought down to him.
“I know it takes a while to get the people, so I’m patient,” said Lopez while recalling the ordeal. “I don’t have my cellphone with me because the policy is you can’t use a cellphone inside the jail.”
At that point, Lopez said he tried to contact the guards through an intercom system inside the visiting room.
“So, I press the intercom button and nothing. I press it again, and it doesn’t work,” he explained.
A half-hour soon turns into an hour.
"At that time, I'm really mad, and I'm thinking, ‘How can they forget about me?’ So, I start hitting the door really loud to get someone to let me out."
Two hours go by. All the while, Lopez is screaming while pounding on the door.
He finally accepts the strong possibility that he'll be sleeping on the cold concrete floor.
"I have a sweater and a jacket, and I take off my sweater and I try to use it as a pillow," he said.
Lopez thinks about Daniel Chong, a UCSD student who was left inside a Kearny Mesa holding cell last April after being forgotten by DEA officers for five days. Chong would eventually file a claim asking for $20 million following the incident, which he called “life-altering.”
Related stories at NBCSanDiego.com
“I can't imagine how you could last that long without going crazy," said Lopez.
Finally, after four long hours, Lopez said a guard heard him and freed him.
Lopez, who’s also a Vista Parks and Rec commissioner, said a sheriff’s official called him and apologized following the incident.
But the attorney is concerned about safety inside San Diego jails, saying a colleague later told him that the intercom he had used inside the visiting room had been broken for eight months.
“[What] if I was unhealthy … had a heart attack? What if I had diabetes and had a sugar issue?” he pondered. “If they hadn’t heard me with the screaming and banging … there was no other way they were going to hear me.”
At this point, Lopez said he’s not sure if he plans to file a lawsuit.
Leave a Comment:
Before being allowed to practice lawyers should be incarcerated in a prison, in general population, so they get a good feel for the kind of trash they work so hard to keep on the streets.
I am sorry for your ordeal and not quite certain how I would react at this point if the incident had happened to me. I urge you as an officer of the court system and by all appearance with your position as a member of the community parks and recreation commission NOT to file a lawsuit against the city/county. Instead work with your fellow law enforcement and judicial system associates to implement change within the system. Allow the city/county to use funds to install cameras and other type monitoring devices or to establish systems and processes to ensure this doesn't happen to someone else. As a society WE have got to stop blaming each other and recognize mistakes happen. Thank GOD you are alright and use the experience to implement change, monitor the change and enforce only then. Again, thank goodness you are alright and pleacse consider the ultimate loser in a legal action is the taxpayer. We all bear the burden and the expense.
You sound like some kind of queer from France that has probably never even been in a damn fight.
Kyle, Aren't there enough laws and lawyers already??? We do normal people have to change all the time?? Why can't those few people stop being fools, live with the situation as a learning/funny situation and MOVE ON!!! The lawyer can spend a couple of hours telling his wife/girlfriend about if over a $300.00 dinner.
At this point, Lopez said he’s not sure if he plans to file a lawsuit.
Of course he is going to file a lawsuit, he's a lowlife, bottom feeding, mouthpiece whom call themselves lawyers but in reality they are ALL just lowlife, money grubbing, bottom feeding useless pieces of crap wearing suits, steal your money in the name of a "retainer", and your entire LIFE to them is nothing more that a very expensive "deal" waiting to be made over "lunch" with the DA. The ONLY way a lawyer is interested in doing ANYTHING is if there is going to be lots of money in it for them.
TOO bad he was not left there for 5 days like that other guy was made to suffer. Now THAT would be fair in my eyes and the lawyer would then REALLY find out what it is like to be a part of the 99%
I am reminded of a case I was selected to sit on a jury for. Stupid, lazy, cheap cops lost the case for the prosecution because they couldn't photograph the victim. The reason? Their camera had dead batteries! Intercom broken for months? Really?
He's only a lawyer. The guards probably just thought a cockroach was in the room.
San Diego... the people in charge were probably off playing some video poker.
Says he didn't have is phone because not allowed to use them in jail. Unless confiscated do you really think he left it in his car or something.
You folks that think this is funny are real farm animals. It seems you are just to comfortable with an authoritarian police state. The people in that jail showed the typical "who gives a sh!t" attitude prevalent in most government entities. They are lucky nothing happened to that man while in that room. What if there was a fire or a health issue and no one had accountability for him. I would have no issue if he sued the crap out of him. It's amazing the government can't afford lawsuits but they can afford to hire incompetent fools.
You got a point
Yes, it would have been a terrible accident and one I am sure the dept will ensure never happens again ..... without a lawsuit from one of the lowest members of the species a lawyer.
I think this is called getting "your 15 minutes of fame". Just how hard did he really beat on the door, hmm?
He has feminine hands like all lawyers and big shots. These guys wouldn't know hot to check the oil in their cars.
This guy's missing something if he doesn't file suit, and he should demand enough money that the people of San Diego start paying attention to the scum they vote for and otherwise hire to represent them.
Sorry Mr attorney.I do remember that previous case.On the other hand,20 million is way outta line.How about 1 million,and none for his attorney but a good kick in the nutz for suing for 20 mil
I'm pretty damn sure if I was a lawyer and the police left me locked up in a room for 4 hours, I'd sue the @!$%# out of them and win. The department would be begging for a settlement that was not publicized too much.
I'd sue the @!$%# out of them. If I lost I'd do it again and again and again and again til I get justice. I take medications and I could have easily died in there.
This man's experience is just emblematic of everything that is wrong with what we all take for granted and that is a bureaucracy. Whether it is the criminal justice system or any large publicly funded organizations we have allowed competency to be slowly removed from the equation. These people who work for them such as police, firefighters, teachers and the court develop a sense of entitlement to have this job and demand ridiculous retirement packages that we the public have to fund forever. If any of these poor saps had to leave the protected world of their bureaucracy and had to try and function in the real world of competency and competition they would fail miserably.
No joke. This happened to me once long ago. My client, accused of shotgunning an elderly couple in their little country store, was in a small county jail. Myself and a psychiatrist (Glen Weaver of Cincinnati, if he's still around) were interviewing the defendant and we were forgotten about. Very scary. Glen never stopped talking to the guy.
At first I was sympathetic and concern. Both feelings went away when I got to the part about him being a lawyer. Then it just became funny. Of course he is considering a lawsuit! It it were any other profession than lawyer it would have been newsworthy.
i would do a lawsuit because the employee apparently don't know his easy job. it's so easy he actually has gotten stupid doing it.
There are millions of stupid people drifting toward oblivion out there in the U.S. workplace. It's like the methhead who is supposed to leave the pickles off my burger, per my request. That's his job. I get past the drive-through window, stop, check, and--voila!--pickles are on my hamburger. And these people want more than minimum wage?
Government schools and benefits at their FINEST!!!!
This lawyer's mentality and sense of outrage is the same as the guy who gets stranded on the Interstate for five hours during a snowstorm because The Weather Channel didn't mention its severity often enough.
Sue them. Definitely.
How can you sue California??? They are 8 billion in the hole and no one will loan them any money - except Obama and they had to promise Obama 8 million Latino, pervert and welfare votes!!
OMG four hours how did he survive?
Survive! He brought his own coffee thermos..
Well, there's the problem... They let him out!
Personally I wish he would have been forgotten for a month. Would have saved the State a lot of money!!! And there would have been a job opening... One of those "key ready" ones Obama says are available!!
What a total jag!
One of the funniest stories I've seen in a long time! Thanks for the chuckle MSNBC.
All:
God save your majesty!
Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.
Dick:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.
Now we don't have to kill the lawyers as in Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth. Apparently, there is jail space enough for them!
Lawyers are............well, lawyers.
I am sure if he raised a ruckus loud enough, someone would have heard.
Oh well, had he 15 seconds of fame.
Who says it was an accident?