William Hayden Schuck was a thrill-seeker, an adventure lover and a risk-taker, his parents said.
He jumped off high cliffs, drove too fast and surfed in places he wasn’t supposed to, his mother said.
His parents never expected him to die in San Diego County Jail in March 2022.
“I worried about him every day of his life,” his mother, Sabrina Schuck, told McClatchy News. “… I just never saw this coming.”
William Schuck, who went by Hayden, was found dead in a cell on March 16, 2022, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California on April 28. He died of heart failure caused by “profound dehydration and completely untreated withdrawals,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit contends that jail staff failed to sufficiently check on him and did not provide adequate medical care.
“His death was entirely preventable,” the complaint says.
A spokesperson for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that the department’s “deepest sympathies go out to the family and loved ones of Mr. Schuck.”
“Though the department does not comment on pending litigation, the Sheriff’s Department continues to strive to maintain a safe environment for everyone in our custody,” the statement says.
Schuck’s arrest
Schuck was arrested after a car crash on March 10, 2022, according to the complaint. Baggies containing substances suspected to be drugs were found in his car, and he was accused of driving under the influence and possession of a controlled substance, according to the complaint.
After his arrest, he told officers that he hadn’t slept in 44 hours but denied using drugs that day, according to the complaint.
Schuck was taken for a medical evaluation after his arrest and was found to have high blood pressure, putting him in “hypertension stage 2,” which is close to a hypertensive crisis.
Schuck also had a low BMI and a suspected history of drug use, according to the complaint.
Despite his “alarming medical conditions,” officers booked him into jail instead of sending him back to the hospital, according to the complaint.
He was not housed in a medical observation bed, the psychiatric stabilization unit or a sobering cell, according to the complaint. Instead he was placed in a single-occupancy holding cell.
On March 15, 2022, when a nurse took his vitals, his blood pressure was found to be “abnormally high,” and the nurse said he was experiencing an “altered thought process” that made him “nonsensical,” the complaint says. He also appeared “disheveled” and had dried blood on him.
“Despite these increasingly serious signs of medical distress, including unexplained wounds, (the nurse) did not summon medical care,” the complaint says.
Later that morning, Schuck was taken to court for an arraignment, and the judge ordered that he be taken back for a medical screen because he appeared unable to understand the proceedings or clarify his name and date of birth, the complaint says.
After court, while deputies were bringing him back to a holding cell, Schuck “lost his balance” and “slumped down the wall” before getting up and continuing to walk to the cell, the complaint says. Despite this, the deputies left him in the cell “without summoning medical attention.”
On March 16, 2022, just after 9:30 a.m., deputies found him “unresponsive” in the cell, the complaint says. He was pronounced dead just after 10:15 a.m.
Medical examiners found that he had had no contact with other inmates during his stay at the facility, that he appeared “gaunt,” and had multiple scabs, contusions and sores on his body, the complaint says. They found he died from “profound dehydration and completely untreated withdrawals, which ultimately caused heart failure,” the complaint says.
Jail staff should have conducted checks on Schuck at least once every hour, the complaint says. They also failed to provide him with necessary medical attention and “deliberately ignored his needs,” according to the complaint.
‘A really special kid’
Schuck’s mother said she did not receive a call about her son’s death in jail until after she looked up his status on the jail website and saw that it said “no longer in custody.”
When she called the jail to find out what had happened, the people on the other end of the phone told her they were “not at liberty to say.”
“What do you mean ‘not at liberty to say?’ Where is he?” she said. “The deputy watch commander (called back) that day and said, ‘We’re so sorry, but he was unresponsive.’”
An autopsy was conducted the day after his death, but the medical examiner didn’t complete a report until nearly a year later, according to the Schucks’ lawyer.
Sabrina Schuck said that her son was taken in by a system that’s supposed to be trusted but ultimately failed him.
“I don’t understand how a whole culture walks past a man every day who falls and stumbles and lapses and has bruises all over him and is vomiting blood and they think, ‘He doesn’t want any help,’” she said. “I feel like that’s a sad state of affairs.”
She called her son “a really special kid” who was extremely active from the time he was young.
“He had four sets of stitches to his face before he was 5 years old,” she said.
He was also close with his family, including his two sisters and large group of cousins.
“It was traumatizing for the entire family,” she said of his death.
The lawsuit seeks damages of an unspecified amount, including for William Hayden Schuck’s pain and suffering prior to his death.
Sabrina Schuck and her husband, Timothy Schuck, who is also a plaintiff on the lawsuit, say they hope it will also help bring about cultural change in the county’s criminal justice system.
“This is not how human beings should should be treated,” Sabrina Schuck said.
“We just never expected this outcome,” Timothy Schuck said. “It’s just heinous.”