It took more than two years of a Black mother’s repeated and public questioning for Minnesota officials to take seriously an investigation into her son’s death. But Del Shea Perry’s work, bolstered by a nurse practitioner’s gripping account in letters and on NBC-affiliated KARE 11 News, is finally beginning to inform legislative reform in Minnesota that would among other things improve requirements for jails to report neglect. Perry’s 27-year-old son, Hardel Sherrell, was all but left to die at the Beltrami County Jail, and even after nurse practitioner Stephanie Lundblad’s advocacy for the man, he died on Sept. 2, 2018. Jail staffers had accused him of faking paralysis, Lundblad said in her first public interview, held last week with KARE News. 

She is a central witness in an FBI investigation of the Beltrami County Jail, and the level of neglect she described is simply unconscionable. “Felt like I had witnessed a murder,” she told KARE News. Warning: The videos in this story contain disturbing jail surveillance footage that may be triggering to some viewers.

Lundblad was newly employed with the Beltrami County Jail and still undergoing training when she was told on Aug. 31, 2018, to check on Sherrell. He had been recently transferred to the jail regarding firearm possession charges, and he also was charged with domestic assault in Dakota County, stemming from an incident with an ex-girlfriend, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported just after Sherrell’s death. When Lundblad encountered Sherrell, she knew immediately he wasn’t faking. He was begging for his life with his mouth drooping, tears on his cheeks, and the scent of sweat and urine thick in the air, the nurse told KARE. Lundblad, an employee of MEnD Correctional Care at the time, checked Sherrell’s vitals, and he had high blood pressure, an elevated heart rate, and low oxygen saturation, she said.

“He couldn’t even stand up. He could barely talk. He could still cry,” the nurse told KARE. “It looked like a man who was suffering, that was sick. That was dying.”

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The day before Lundblad saw Sherrell, jail administrator Calandra Allen refused to allow him to be taken to the hospital and deemed him a flight risk despite a doctor’s recommendation on Aug. 30, 2018, KARE reported. When Lundblad saw Sherrell, she advised staff members he should be taken to an emergency room and he was two days before his death, KARE reported. Lundblad wrote the Minnesota Department of Justice Inspection Unit on Sept. 11, 2018, to report what she described as neglect.

“The conditions in which I found the inmate were disturbing,” she said in the report KARE obtained. “My report gives all details, including that when I directed that the inmate’s diaper and clothes be changed, the officers refused to help. The RN later had to call her family to bring another set of clothes to the jail for her, as her clothes were full of urine and sweat after we changed the inmate ourselves.”

Lundblad had earlier written to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office to describe a man living in fear of guards. “When Hardel was getting changed into clean clothes I remember him saying to please don’t let the officers touch him,” she wrote. The nurse also said she disagreed with Todd Leonard, the doctor who evaluated Sherrell’s case off-site and initially prescribed him over the counter pain killers and an antihistamine. “I told him vital signs and ECGs don’t lie—both of which were consistently abnormal with Hardel,” Lundblad said. She accused the doctor, who founded MEnD Correctional Care and bragged about spending less time in jails on the company’s website, of being more worried about his company than Hardel. She said at one point in the report that Leonard accused Sherrill of “giving himself a blood clot from faking his illness.” “He said it was likely he killed himself or even stuck a sock down his throat,” Lundblad wrote.

Although the Ramsey County medical examiner initially determined Sherrell died of pneumonia, an independent autopsy later revealed he suffered from a rare but treatable disorder known as Guillain-Barré Syndrome, which can trigger paralysis, the Bemidji Police Department said in a statement the Appeal obtained. Lundblad sent letters to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice and the state Board of Nursing, documents that would ultimately lead to an FBI investigation into Sherrell’s death and inform the legislative reform currently being considered by state lawmakers.

The original opinion given by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, however, found “no violations” in Sherrell’s case. Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell told KARE a previous administration let Lundblad’s letter “slip through the cracks.”

Perry refused to let her son’s death investigation do the same. She gave powerful testimony in February before a House committee considering legislation named in her son’s honor. She also filed a lawsuit against the Beltrami County Jail, MEnD Correctional Care, and Sanford Health in February. “Unfortunately, he was slowing dying right before their very eyes,” the mother said. “And they just left him there on a cold jail cell floor. Crying out for help for days—not minutes, days. Until he took his last breath.”

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Legislators again heard testimony from Perry and other parents advocating for jail reform at a joint House and Senate committee meeting on May 8. The majority of the hearing was devoted to the Hardel Sherrell Act. “The measure would improve safety for inmates in state and local correctional facilities by establishing standards regarding mental health, suicide prevention, medication administration and discharge planning,” the office of Democratic Rep. Carlos Mariani wrote in a news release. “The bill would also clarify requirements for inspection of facilities, improve reporting requirements regarding deaths and update a 115-year-old standard on the use of force by guards.”

Mariani said in his statement: “Everyone who enters a correction facility deserves to be safe and should have hope that as they re-enter society, they can be a successful, contributing member of their community. Today, we heard how our systems are falling short of those objectives. We have the capacity to build a corrections system that both delivers the accountability that comes with wrongdoing, while recognizing the humanity and worth within each and every person.”