The families of two people who died in San Diego jails last year have filed separate civil rights lawsuits in federal court — both accusing the Sheriff’s Office and its private medical contractors of systemic failures they say took the lives of Callen Lines and Corey Dean.
Lines died from drug withdrawal in the Las Colinas women’s jail in May, a day after her arrest. Dean, who suffered from schizophrenia, died two months later in the Vista jail after weeks in solitary confinement.
Both lawsuits, filed last week by attorneys Grace Jun and Danielle Pena, allege staff ignored repeated pleas for help from both.
Lines, 31, was a nursing assistant and mother of two. She started using drugs in 2023 after a traumatic event, her family said. When she was arrested, she had been struggling to get sober.
According to the lawsuit, Lines had suffered a withdrawal-related seizure while in custody just two weeks before her May 11 arrest, requiring emergency treatment.
That incident was documented in her medical records, the lawsuit says, and during intake, she was upfront about her substance use and medical history.
Despite disclosing this information, Lines did not receive adequate monitoring or appropriate medication to manage withdrawal, the lawsuit says, even as her condition worsened and as she begged for help.
According to two women who were housed with her, Lines repeatedly pressed the intercom in her cell in the hours before her death, yelled that she was having trouble breathing and begged deputies for medical help.
Deputies cut off her calls, the lawsuit says, dismissed her as a liar and told her to sit down.
“She sat down right in front of the cell door window,” the lawsuit says, quoting her cellmate. When a deputy later walked by during a safety check, Lines unsuccessfully begged him to stop.
Lines’ cellmate fell asleep and awoke to a deputy knocking on the cell door, then pointing to Lines and gesturing “What’s up?” the lawsuit says.
The cellmate “noticed Ms. Lines was lying on the chair with her back on the seat … and her left arm hanging off the chair, sticking outwards,” the lawsuit says. She described Lines as “completely blue and purple.”
The lawsuit argues that Lines’ death was the result of long-standing problems the Sheriff’s Office has known about and failed to fix.
Attorneys point to warnings from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, a 2022 state audit and prior deaths at Las Colinas involving untreated withdrawal, including those of Elisa Serna in 2019 and Vianna Granillo in 2022.
Serna’s family settled a lawsuit with the county in July 2024 for $14 million. Granillo’s family filed its lawsuit two years ago. In September, a federal judge denied motions by the county and its medical contractor, Naphcare, to dismiss the case.
Another lawsuit, filed last week by the family of Corey Dean, alleges that jail staff knew the 43-year-old “suffered from psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, and had a history of mental health treatment during prior incarcerations.”
Despite this information, the lawsuit says, he was placed in the jail’s general population without a psychiatric assessment.
Dean spent days screaming and pleading for help. To get attention, “he flooded his cell with dirty toilet water and smeared feces across his face and body,” he lawsuit says.
Despite assessments by clinicians who all acknowledged Dean’s strange behavior, he was not moved into psychiatric housing. The lawsuit includes excerpts from the assessments.
“Reports of severe mental illness w/ bizarre [behaviors] (e.g., yelling, urinating on the door, and unkept cell), etc. … urinating on himself to stay warm. Psychosis, disorganization, unkempt, urinating inappropriately. … Highly malodorous outside of cell. Flies. Thick bundle of blankets outside of cell to seep up urine. Pool of urine inside of cell in between toilet and door.”
Eleven days after he was booked, a clinician recommended Dean be moved into the jail’s mental health unit, but there were no beds available.
Two days later he was moved into administrative separation, a type of solitary confinement. He would die there 15 days later.
“Based on information and belief … deputies housed Mr. Dean in Ad-Sep as retaliation for his psychotic behavior,” the lawsuit says.
According to sworn statements from several men in cells near Dean, gathered as part of a class-action lawsuit against the county over jail conditions, Dean pleaded for help and smeared his body with feces in the days leading up to his death.
His intercom calls were ignored, the men said. When he flooded his cell to get attention, deputies placed blankets at the door to stop contaminated water from spreading.
“Mr. Dean spent most of his last day alive crying out for help with no response,” the lawsuit says.
Like the Lines family’s lawsuit, Dean’s argues that that the county was well aware of problems with medical and mental health care in its jails, yet county leaders have failed to implement meaningful reforms or hold employees accountable.
A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson declined a request to comment on the lawsuits, citing pending litigation.
In interviews and public comments, Sheriff Kelly Martinez has vowed to improve conditions in the jails and reduce the number of deaths in them.
In 2022, 19 people died in San Diego jails; a 20th died in a hospital after being released from custody. Thirteen died in 2023, nine in 2024 and 10 last year.
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