After Huerfano County jail deputies slammed Michael Burch into a metal bench inside his cell, crushing his ribs, he was denied a hospital visit or any other medical care and left to die inside his cell, attorneys for his estate say in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday against the county’s sheriff, commissioners and hospital district.
Over the course of eight days, blood pooled inside the 69-year-old’s lungs due to punctured organs and internal bleeding, before he suffocated to death, attorneys allege. After reviewing surveillance footage, the El Paso County coroner said Burch died of blunt force trauma to his chest and stomach and ruled his death a homicide.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, seeks to bring “accountability and justice” nearly two years after the death of Burch, who was awaiting trial and died 10 days after he was booked into the Walsenburg jail without any injuries.
The defendants “both caused and failed to treat” Burch’s injuries as he endured “approximately 160 hours of unfathomable pain,” his lawyers with Rathod Mohamedbhai, LLC and the Law Offices of Adam J. Schulze said Thursday in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
“There’s just secrecy, stonewalling, zero accountability, zero empathy, zero compassion,” attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai said Thursday during a news conference in Denver. “So we want our elected officials, the stewards of taxpayers’ dollars, to say what happened to Mr. Burch’s life.”
The 73-page complaint names Sheriff Bruce Newman, who oversees the county jail, and three of the jail’s employees. The lawsuit also accuses Walsenburg-based Spanish Peaks Regional Health Center, which is operated by the Huerfano County Hospital District, under a contract with the state of Colorado, for failing to adequately train its paramedics.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office declined to comment and referred The Colorado Sun to the county’s attorney, who did not return a message by phone. A spokesperson for the health center declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Burch, who moved to Colorado after 23 years as a corrections officer with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, was experiencing a mental health crisis when he was arrested in March 2023. Two brothers, who had never met Burch, reported that he drove into their driveway and started to ramble before swinging a rubber mallet and driving away, the complaint stated.
A deputy who arrested Burch recognized Burch was suffering from mental health issues that required treatment by a mental health professional, the complaint said, but no medical screening was performed when he was booked into jail.
Three days later, Stuart Pino, a detention officer at the jail, began to yell at Burch, accusing him of using a small pencil to hurt himself, according to the complaint. Attorneys who reviewed 400 hours of surveillance and body-worn camera footage from the incident say there’s no video of Burch trying to use the pencil to cause self-harm.
Body-worn camera footage from jail staff shows Pino pointing his Taser at Burch, shouting “Drop it, or we’ll drop you!”
Pino then tased Burch, who then lifted his hands and moved toward the officer, footage shows. Pino then grabbed Burch’s hands and tackled him into a metal bench in the back of his cell.
Burch laid on the ground inside his cell, moaning, while he was placed in handcuffs, footage shows. He told paramedics that he wanted to go to the hospital, explaining that his ribs were “crushed,” but a paramedic said he wasn’t experiencing a medical emergency and that he was “fine.”
Within hours of being tackled, a large black bruise formed and quickly grew on Burch’s torso, according to the complaint.
“A visual examination — let alone an X-ray — would have revealed obvious signs of Mr. Burch’s fractured ribs, including the blood hemorrhaging into his body that had quickly manifested into a deep black bruise spanning the entirety of his lower torso,” the complaint stated.
In the following days, Burch continued to plead for medical care, according to the lawsuit, but was provided “no medical care whatsoever. Jail staff covered Burch’s cell window with black plastic, making it impossible to monitor his condition, the complaint stated.
Breathing became so painful his body stopped using his right lung, which shrank to half its normal size, attorneys said.
The lawsuit alleges that Captain Lea Vigil, a jail supervisor who was on the scene, has since admitted that the situation required no force at all, according to the lawsuit.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation conducted a review of Burch’s death and presented the evidence to 3rd Judicial District Attorney Henry Solano, who later decided that no criminal charges would be filed against the sheriff’s employees.
In a Jan. 10, 2024, letter, Solano wrote that there was “sufficient evidence” to support Pino was acting in self defense or defending others in the jail when he tased and tackled Burch in his jail cell.
Mohamedbhai said he believes Pino has since been promoted.
The sheriff’s office did not immediately answer a list of questions from The Sun. It is not clear if any of the jail staff were found to have violated sheriff’s office policies or if they faced discipline for their use of force.