LEWISTON — The first thing Pamela Ashby asked when she learned her son Trevor had died from pneumonia at the Androscoggin County Jail: how could this happen?

Two years later, after reviewing medical records and video surveillance, she still has the same question.

“It kind of left me even more dumbfounded,” Ashby said in an interview with the Portland Press Herald. “There were so many people involved here … yet it still happened.”

Ashby is now suing the Androscoggin County Jail and its health care provider, Correctional Psychiatric Solutions, or CPS, alleging they denied her son adequate medical care. In her complaints, Ashby says the jail ignored pressure wounds that had developed on her son’s back, which grew infected, and his worsening condition.

Trevor Saunders died Nov. 18, 2023, from a disease that Ashby and her lawyers say the jail should have caught early on.

Ashby believes her son’s death is indicative of a larger, systemic problem at the jail, where, her lawsuits state, staff routinely dismiss and ignore inmates’ medical needs. Both lawsuits cite medical records, in which several employees said they met with Saunders, who had come into the jail still dealing with the effects of a stroke he had survived the year before.

Some of the employees, according to the complaints, eventually suggested they send Saunders to get treatment outside of the jail — but they never did.

“Trevor’s death is the result of a broken system where needs for basic medical care were ignored, training was lacking, and constitutional protections were routinely violated,” Rosalie Wennberg, one of Ashby’s attorneys, said in an emailed statement. “The facts of this case make it clear that Trevor’s death was preventable, and that at every turn, he was denied help and care that would have saved his life.”

Ashby is suing CPS and two registered nurses who worked for the jail under the Maine Wrongful Death Act. She is also suing the jail, the county and several officials — including Sheriff Eric Samson, his chief deputy, William Gagne, former jail administrator Jeffrey Chute and nearly a dozen corrections officers — for violating Saunders’ constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.

“Contracting out the provision of jail medical care to a private company does not relieve Defendant Androscoggin County of its constitutional duty to provide adequate health care to inmates at ACJ,” the complaint states.

Samson said in an email Tuesday morning he hadn’t seen the complaint yet, but his office doesn’t generally comment on pending litigation. Other county defendants did not respond to emails Monday afternoon seeking a response to the lawsuit.

Joshua D. Hadiaris, an attorney for CPS, said his client cannot comment on the specifics of Saunders’ case because of patient confidentiality obligations.

“However, CPS is committed to providing quality health care and takes all concerns related to patient care very seriously,” Hadiaris wrote in an email.

THE STROKE

Saunders, 25, was Ashby’s only son. He had two siblings on his father’s side, according to an obituary, and several aunts, uncles, cousins and friends described as “chosen family.”

He went to school in Auburn, Mechanic Falls and Poland, Ashby said, and was an active young man who could talk to anybody and pick up almost any sport. He had a particular affinity for basketball and golf, which he still played even after a rare spinal stroke upended his life in March 2022.

“I think that was going to be the sport that he would have continued on forever,” Ashby said, “no matter how much of his physical ability he got back.”

Saunders had only been out of school for six years when he had the stroke. He had been doing manual labor and trying to create a good home for his son Alex, Ashby said. He was the kind of father, she said, who waited with his son at the bus stop and taught him video games and wrestling.

Saunders struggled after the stroke. Ashby said her active and adventurous son, who prided himself on his strength and mobility, was suddenly unable to get out of a hospital bed in Boston, where he was being treated. Physical therapy helped, but Saunders was frustrated by all of the things he still couldn’t do, Ashby said, and the new reality depressed him.

One night in January 2023, Ashby said, Saunders went drinking with friends. Ashby said she thinks her son just wanted to have a normal night out, but he ended up in a single-car crash, injuring himself and damaging property.

Afterward, Saunders spent several weeks in the hospital.

He was later sentenced to 45 days in jail for operating under the influence and on a revoked license.

Neither Ashby nor Saunders was concerned about what his time in jail would be like. She said her son was willing to take the accountability for his actions and entered the jail “physically fine.”

AT THE JAIL

Ashby says jail staff wouldn’t let Saunders wear a hand brace that helped keep his muscles from retracting while he slept, a long-lasting byproduct of his stroke. She said it was just the first of many instances in which staff dismissed her son’s medical needs. He later developed pressure sores on his back, the lawsuits state.

Saunders first reported his wounds to the jail on Nov. 1, according to both complaints. He spent the next two weeks meeting with various nurses and physician’s assistants, in-person and over Zoom, all of whom documented his worsening condition, his irregular heartbeat and complaints of pain.

One of the lawsuits says Saunders, who was under the constant surveillance of several jail officers, spent days moaning from his cell and begging for a cane, a wheelchair and diapers to help with his urinary incontinence, another lingering symptom of the spinal stroke. It alleges his cellmate and others also called for help, and they were ignored.

No one took Saunders’ vitals, the complaint claims, or ordered lab testing that one nurse suggested could identify the problem. According to the lawsuits, staff offered him an extra mattress, Gatorade and ibuprofen.

On Nov. 14, 2023 — nearly three weeks into his sentence — a nurse determined Saunders’ wounds were a medical emergency, but their boss still refused to send him to get treatment outside of the jail, the complaints state.

Instead, they say, officers moved him to a higher-security area where they could watch him on camera. The complaint against the jail includes photographs of Saunders, lying near his own urine, unable to sit up, hold a cup or eat.

Ashby and her lawyers claim this was the result of the jail’s “custom and practice that discouraged providing inmates with necessary care from outside medical providers, even where such care was medically necessary, in order to keep costs down.”

During his time there, Saunders had complained some to his mother, but she is horrified by what she has learned over the last two years about his treatment.

“We should be providing a place for people to go serve their time for something they’ve done, and come out and potentially be someone that can be in our community and maybe learn from being in there,” she said. “Instead of not coming out at all.”

For Ashby, she now spends time golfing with Saunders’ son, Alex.

That’s what her son would be doing, she said, if he were still here. She said he had a lot to offer Alex.

“Not only to his family but to other people in his life,” Ashby said. “And he just wasn’t given the opportunity to be the person he could have been.”