Over 3 Years, 43 People Died in Riverside County Jail. Christopher Zumwalt, Violently Pulled from a Cell While Having a Psychotic Crisis, Was One

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Ten correctional officers used pepper spray, stun shields, multiple Taser shocks and a Stinger 15 grenade to remove a single, naked man from his cell in Riverside County’s Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility, according to video footage obtained last month by The New York Times. Ten minutes later he stopped breathing.

Christopher Zumwalt was found unresponsive in a safety cell in the early hours of Oct. 23, 2020, after being violently forced out of the sobering cell. He’d been held there for over 10 hours while decompensating from what lawyers called a bad reaction to methamphetamine. He was never charged with a crime.

Zumwalt, a 39-year-old father of three, died two days later, medically brain dead after cardiac arrest in the jail, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. The Times’ reporting also revealed that Riverside County settled with the family last December for $7.5 million, one of the largest settlements in the county’s history according to Peter Williamson, one of the attorneys representing Zumwalt’s family.

Zumwalt was among 12 people who died in Riverside County jails in 2020 and again in 2021. The number surged to 19 in 2022, according to data from OpenJustice.doj.

Why did Zumwalt need to be removed from his cell at all? The jail’s policy is to conduct a medical exam within six hours of an inmate entering a sobering cell. When officers began the extraction he had been in the cell for over nine hours with no exam.

“If the whole premise of getting him out of the cell was to have him medically evaluated, why didn’t the nurse rush in immediately and evaluate him? [She] would have seen that he was already unconscious [after the violent extraction],” Williamson told MindSite News.

In February, California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a civil rights investigation into Riverside County Sheriff’s Office over allegations of excessive force and misconduct in this and other cases.

A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Department’s coroner’s office declined to comment and said that the death report could not be released because the matter is under investigation. Phone calls and emails requesting comment from the media information bureau of the sheriff’s department were not returned.

“The facts of this case clearly show the actions of our deputies were appropriate and lawful,” Sheriff Chad Bianco said in a statement quoted by multiple news outlets. “The actions of Mr. Zumwalt while in a methamphetamine-induced psychosis caused his death.”

Bianco is a controversial figure. A fiery conservative and fierce critic of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Bianco has acknowledged that he was once a member of the right-wing paramilitary group Oath Keepers, but said he is no longer affiliated.

As in 48 of California’s 58 counties, Riverside County’s sheriff also acts as the official coroner, a shared responsibility that has drawn concerns of conflict of interest. A 2022 bill requiring counties to separate the two functions passed in the California Assembly but died in the Senate.

Zumwalt had no history of psychosis or prior arrests, but in videos viewed by MindSite News, he was visibly agitated in the sobering cell – pacing, banging on the cell door, removing his clothes and hovering over the toilet. In trying to explain this behavior, which was not consistent with the small amount of methamphetamine in his bloodstream at that time, Williamson and Burton turned to forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu.

Toxicology analysis at the hospital found Zumwalt was hypoglycemic, and Omalu concluded Zumwalt’s hypoglycemia led him to become delusional, according to Williamson. In rare cases, dehydration can lead to a drop in blood sugar.

From left, Christopher Zumwalt with children Aiden, Paddy and Katherine, and partner Leeyonnie Hernandez.

Robin Zumwalt, Christopher’s mother, told MindSite News that family was hugely important to him and that he “used to love to go fishing and camping” with his partner and three kids.

Police detained him outside his home when a neighbor called expressing concern for his safety because he seemed to be acting strangely.

He was cooperative at that time, calmly admitting that he’d used methamphetamine, police body-cam footage showed.

The body-cam video of his arrest also showed Zumwalt on the street asking if the officers had any water (they said no). He went without food for more than 12 hours, and his only access to water was from a sink built into the sobering cell’s toilet.

During the effort to extract Zumwalt from his cell, officers deployed pepper spray, discharged a flash-bang grenade and shocked him with a Taser. Zumwalt is heard screaming throughout. He also was beaten and tightly strapped to a restraint chair before finally being removed from the cell, video shows.

He was then placed in a new cell and left unattended with a spit hood covering his head for nearly 10 minutes. Jail videos show that at 12:24 a.m., roughly five minutes after being wheeled into the safety cell, his breathing noticeably stopped. It was another six minutes before anyone entered the cell to check on him.

Riverside County’s standards manual states that people affected by pepper spray must be provided fresh water to clean affected areas as soon as possible. It also states that “persons who have been sprayed with oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray should be thoroughly decontaminated, including hair, head, and clothing, prior to application of a spit hood.”

In the body-cam and jail videos, correctional officers can be heard repeatedly yelling, “Come to the door,” “Lay on your stomach,” and even “This will all be over if you lay down.”

Zumwalt, apparently unable to think logically, didn’t comply. He paid with his life.

“If they had gotten to him immediately and started to resuscitate him, he’d be alive today,” said Williamson.

Reporting for this story was supported by the California Wellness Foundation and the California Health Care Foundation.