By Rebecca Rosen Lum
Posted on Sat, Jul. 03, 2004
An aide for Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said Friday her office intends to investigate the death of a prison inmate from Richmond who had a dental infection so severe that he could not swallow for days before officials sent him to an outside hospital.
A report from the ambulance that took 41-year-old Anthony Shumake from California State Prison Solano in Vacaville to a Manteca hospital on Monday says his neck "was swollen and red in color down to his clavicle ... patient was also spitting up gray sputum." Shumake died hours later at the hospital.
"The way it was handled raises some serious questions," said Hans Hemann, Hancock's chief of staff. "We'll be looking into it very thoroughly. It raises questions about the entire system as well as for this one family, who must be going through unbelievable anguish."
Prison officials said Friday state law forbade them from commenting about a prisoner's medical issues, adding that the facility's medical staff followed procedure after finding they could not properly care for Shumake.
But the death prompted mistrust and criticism from parts of Richmond's political establishment, led by the Rev. Andre Shumake, a prominent Iron Triangle activist and the prisoner's uncle.
Family members said prison officials have told them next to nothing since sending a telegram Tuesday morning informing them that Anthony Shumake had died and that the body would be cremated if they did not retrieve it.
"There has been tremendous negligence. Now it seems like they're trying to cover everything up," the Rev. Shumake said. "They didn't even have the decency to knock on the door."
Prison officials and the San Joaquin Coroner's Office said Friday they would not release the cause of death for several weeks. Several inmates who knew Shumake told the family he died of heart failure.
Prison doctors did not find that Anthony Shumake needed emergency medical care, but did need care the facility could not provide, Department of Corrections Lt. Mary Neade said. So they called for a basic life-support ambulance to take Shumake on a two-hour ride to Doctors Hospital in Manteca, a facility with which the prison contracts.
"When an inmate is sick we try to treat him here. If the ... medical department feels he can't be treated here, we send them out to the hospital," Neade said. "If staff determines he needs immediate attention, they call 911 and he's treated at the nearest hospital."
The ambulance company did not return calls Friday. A hospital spokesman said the cause of death remained officially "undetermined" pending results of the coroner's autopsy and toxicology tests.
Shumake told the ambulance crew that he'd had a tooth pulled six days earlier and that his wound had become infected, according to the report. The swelling in his neck made it impossible for him to eat and difficult for him to breathe.
The private ambulance crew checked Shumake's vital signs three times during the trip and found no significant changes, the ambulance report shows.
It was the second prisoner death of the year at Solano, a medium-security prison housing about 6,000 prisoners, Neade said. In January a terminally ill prisoner died of natural causes at an area hospital.
Records show Shumake was serving a 12-year, eight-month sentence for convictions in 2000 of corporal injury to a spouse, stalking and drug possession, as well as a parole violation from a 1994 attempted robbery conviction.
Reach Rebecca Rosen Lum at 510-262-2713 or rrosenlum@cctimes.com .
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