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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.”
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“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:
I am certain he will file a lawsuit, and he should.
What do you have when you have one attorney locked inside a jail? Answer: Not enough attorneys!
Should've put Osambo in there with him and lost the key!!
Now, if that would happen to all liars, er, I mean lawyers, what a wonderful world it would be. One level below sewer scum. Lopez looks so typically arrogant. UGH
Would he be willing to wait for $100 an hour?
A lawyer in lockup for a day means less mischief they can cause.
Oh, poor baby shark, penned up a little? Oh, my, you must sue, isn't it your inalienable right? Or are you a legal immigrant?
Hahahaha! This is great. He deserves a little bit of discomfort for choosing the profession of human parasite. I seriously doubt he beat on the door the entire four hours as the story appears to imply. I'd wager that he beat on the door for about 5 minutes and cried like a babyfor the other three hours and fifty-five minutes.
Now it's time for the rest of the story: What our overpaid NBC reporter Tony Shin failed to mention was the attorney showed up while the "Client" was being brought in and going through the booking process.
"Ingrassia said Lopez arrived about 8:20 p.m. for the visit. He was escorted to the visiting room to wait while deputies looked for his client. Inmates are usually brought to the visiting room within half an hour, Ingrassia said. But Lopez's client was in the process of being booked into the jail, which involves several steps and different deputies. Somehow the message that the inmate had a visitor did not get through.
"It was a breakdown in communication," the commander said."
www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/feb/22/vista-lawyer-locked-jail-lopez/
The Good news is. The intercom system has since been fixed, and the button on the other system is now clearly marked, Ingrassia said.
What! Apparently the button was working, they did not know what the blinking light was for. it is now marked in espanol. "suegra intercomunicador."
Stiff fines and penalties should be applied to the person or persons responsible for the unsafe conditions. What happened to accountability?.
Where are the waterboards when you need them?
It seems very likely that we could get some really important information about terrorism from this guy...better yet, let's put Cheney on the boards...You KNOW he knows stuff we could use...
This should be routine for all lawyers but instead of waiting in a visiting rm they should wait in the gas chamber.
What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish? One's a scum sucking, bottom feeding scavanger and the other's a fish.
What do you call 100 lawyers chained to the bottom of San Francisco bay? A good start.
Lawyers are about as popular as genital herpes.
If we had any real justice in this nation's legal system he would not be able to file a multi-million dollar law suit. At best he should be paid for three hours of his time which is probably at a rate of $150-$400 / hour depending on the ego. No harm came to him. And the prison should be required to repair the intercom within 30 days or pay a fine to some appropriate entity.
To bad he wasn't in there with Bruno Brown. LOL
Hope he did have to pee during that time!
Just getting ready for the time he will be doing real time I guess ?
Four hours. Big freakin deal. I'm a lawyer, and I'm trapped in a small box every day for 8 solid hours! Worse still, every little while, someone comes in an annoys the crap out of me. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS!? Why should I have to suffer like this? Surely there is someone I can sue!?
99% of lawyers give the others a bad name!
What struck me about this scenario is that the guards completely forgot that they had someone in the visiting room, a room without a working intercom. What if the prisoner had been in there and assaulted the attorney? What if the attorney had a medical condition? It seems to me that the system is lax and lends itself to potential harm to attorneys, to prisoners and even the guards themselves. Don't they have a check in and check out system? Shouldn't they always know who is where? This is a jail, for crying out loud. What this says about their security systems is not good.
He is a defense attorney so no big loss.
Sue the piss out of them....california can afford it.......
Glass
I am grateful for a justice system that protects me from being arrested in the middle of the night and disappearing into the gulag. I am grateful for defense attorneys who fight to protect the rights of the accused. I am grateful for a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that guarantees me a fair trial and judgment by my peers. Undoubtedly, it has never occurred to you that those rights you so despise are the rights that prevent this country from being turned into a dictatorship. But it has occurred to me, and I have a great deal of respect for the defense attorneys who must deal every day with some pretty despicable human beings and still continue to defend their rights. They defend the Constitution and all of our rights, so don't be too quick to condemn them.
If you don't think innocent people ever get wrongfully arrested in their own homes,in the middle of the night, in the U.S. please wake up and smell the coffee.Likewise if you believe that everyone in the U.S. who ever got wrongfully arrested in the middle of the night made it back home.
But a very good post otherwise.
To underemployed:
How thoughtful!