Via the Lookout: DEA agents apologize for forgetting college student in cell for four days
Daniel Chong, 24, said that he was taken to the local DEA office after he was caught in a drug raid where he was smoking marijuana on April 20. The agents didn’t charge him criminally and even told him they would drive him home, but apparently forgot about him in a tiny holding cell, where he languished for days without food, water, or a bathroom. Chong says he finally gave up on screaming for help, and eventually tried to kill himself with the glass from his spectacles and drank his own urine, sure he would die there.
A DEA agent discovered him days later and quickly called an ambulance which drove him to the hospital, where he spent three days in intensive care because of his near-failing kidneys, he said.
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San Diego DEA agent Amy Roderick said earlier on Wednesday in a statement to Yahoo News that Chong was caught in a home raid on a “suspected MDMA distribution organization” that also netted several weapons, 18,000 MDMA (“ecstasy”) pills, marijuana, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. “The individual in question was at the house, by his own admission, to get high with his friends,” she wrote. She admitted in the statement that Chong was “accidentally” left in one of the holding rooms, while eight other suspects were either released or transfered to the county jail. Chong also told agents he ate a packet of white powder he found in his cell, which turned out to be meth. “DEA plans to thoroughly review both the events and detention procedures on April 21st and after,” Roderick wrote.
Yeesh.
