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Tyler Tabor with his youngest daughter (Courtesy of Bridget Tabor) |
It was a few minutes before midnight on May 16 when Tyler Tabor’s body began to break down.
He had arrived at the Adams County Detention Facility near Denver two days earlier. The circumstances of his arrest were almost comical. Tabor had three open misdemeanor warrants to his name, most of them relating to minor driving offenses. He had been apprehended at a McDonald’s parking lot when a stranger mistook cigarette smoke and a child’s dirty diaper for heroin, according to his wife.
It was true, however, that Tabor was a junkie. He announced as much when he arrived at Adams.
And there was nothing funny about the pain he was going through now.
Tabor had spent two days vomiting up just about everything he ate or drank. The jail doctor had Tabor on a cocktail of Gatorade, Pepto Bismol, painkillers and anti-nausea pills, but his heroin withdrawal was getting worse by the hour.
By the time the jail nurse called for him to come get his medications at 11:38 p.m. on May 16, Tabor was unable to stand. A cellmate helped him to his feet, but when the nurse handed him his pills, Tabor’s hands cramped so badly he spilled them on the floor. His heart was racing. His blood pressure was dropping. An Adams County Sheriff’s Office deputy literally caught Tabor before he could fall.
But when Tyler Tabor asked for intravenous fluids, the nurse said no.
“She told him that they try not to use IV’s unless it’s absolutely necessary,” according to a report from the district attorney’s office.
Tyler Tabor was dead by dawn.
The official cause: dehydration.
Tabor’s death has caused outrage in Colorado and beyond. He is at least the second young man to die in jail from dehydration linked to heroin withdrawal in as many years. In both instances, the charges against the men were relatively minor. In both instances, surveillance cameras recorded the inmates’ slow, agonizing deaths, fueling complaints from the dead men’s families.
[On jailers’ watch, Mich. man imprisoned for ticket died from ‘excruciating’ drug withdrawal]
And in both instances, prosecutors have declined to press charges against jail officials. On Friday, Dave Young, the district attorney for Adams and Broomfield counties, released an 11-page report on Tabor’s death. It found no “abuse, mistreatment, or maltreatment that rises to a level of criminal culpability.”
“The evidence demonstrates that on April 17, 2015, Mr. Tabor died as a result of his heroin addiction and dehydration associated with his withdrawal,” the report concluded. An internal investigation by the Adam’s County Sheriff’s Office also found no procedural violations connected to the death, according to the Denver Post.
But Bridget Tabor pins the blame on the jailers.
“They killed him, that’s how I feel,” Tyler’s widow told The Washington Post. “Tyler knew his own body better than anybody else. He knew that something was wrong the night before he died. He was asking for an IV, and they told him ‘not unless it’s necessary.'”
“That IV would have saved his life,” she said.
Who took Tyler Tabor’s life? Was it the man who filled his veins with heroin, or the jailers who denied him an IV?
Or was it fate: a drug-fueled prophecy spelled out on Facebook months in advance, and finally fulfilled on May 17?
For Tabor’s family, the answer may mean more than just closure. It may also mean money. His father has hired an attorney and expressed an interest in filing suit against the county. “I’m not the type of person to go and sue somebody, but at this point, whatever happens, happens,” Ray Tabor told the Denver Post.
But for thousands of other American families, however, the answer could mean much more.
[The great American heroin emergency]
Americans’ addiction to heroin is soaring. Two out of every 1,000 people in this country were addicted to heroin in 2013, double the rate in 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 8,200 heroin-related overdose deaths in 2013: nearly quadruple the number in 2002.
How U.S. jails and prisons treat their drug-addicted inmates is a matter of life and death.
“A heart of gold” — and a heroin addiction
They fell in love in a metal factory.
It was 2011. Bridget Buesgens had a baby girl but no job, so she joined her father and brother at the Steel Star Corporation in Dacono, Colo. It was in the warehouse that she met Tyler, a Tommy Lee lookalike with a toddler of his own. He was skinny with dark hair, a goatee and more tattoos or piercings than seemed possible for a 21-year-old.
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| Tyler and Bridget Tabor (Courtesy of Bridget Tabor) |
“Only god can judge me,” read the ink along his jawline.
They were married a year later, with Tyler corralled into a black tie and Bridget dressed in white, her blond tresses down to her waist. A photo from their wedding day shows them side by side, their kids in front of them. Soon, they had a baby of their own.
But it didn’t take long for trouble — and judgment — to find the couple.
“It started off just with prescription drugs,” Bridget told The Post in a telephone interview from her home in Berthoud, Colo. “And it ended up he turned to heroin.”
The first time he tried to kick his habit, it was so tough he decided to give custody of his son to his parents — a decision he later regretted when his mom and dad cut him off, Bridget said.
His Facebook page hints at the friction his addiction caused with family and friends.
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| Tyler and Bridget Tabor (Courtesy of Bridget Tabor) |
“Not lookin forward to going to court at 1:30,” he added shortly afterwards. “Hope it goes good.”
Two days later, when he complained that a rap CD he had bought didn’t work, a family member excoriated him online.
“You have money to blow?” the relative said. “That’s funny didn’t you just say you needed money for groceries.”
Two days after that, Tabor seemed to hit an emotional bottom.
“Strait up I am lost like none other,” he wrote. “Something’s got to change. No joke. I don’t know how much more I can take…. not being able to talk or see my son is really really f—– me up my family.
“No choice but to put a end to all this,” he wrote cryptically. “Miss my son my dad my mom my brother and my sister love u guys.”
Things got worse. Tyler, Bridget and their two kids were evicted from their apartment and had to move in with her parents. Meanwhile, authorities issued three warrants for Tabor’s arrest. All three were for relatively minor offenses — failure to comply with probation for a misdemeanor harassment charge, driving with a suspended license and speeding — but they meant cops were on the lookout for Tabor.
“They were just piddly little things,” Bridget told The Post. But they could easily have been avoided.
“You miss the court date and they automatically issue a warrant for you,” she said. “He missed the court date.”
By this spring, Tabor knew it was only a matter of time before he was arrested, but he wanted to get clean before turning himself into authorities.
“He said that if he went to jail before he detoxed,” Bridget recalled, “he wouldn’t make it out alive.” see more
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