CRIMINAL A brutal jailhouse beating and the search for justice in the City Justice Center b y R ya n K R U L L
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dward was already in crisis this spring when he was attacked by two inmates in his cell at the ity Justice enter.
Locked up since the summer of 2020 for alleged assaults on police officers during a mental-health episode, he had spent the better part of a year in the downtown St. Louis jail, and he was deteriorating,
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RIVERFRONT TIMES
SEPTEMBER 15-21, 2021
according to his mother. In the month leading up to his arch beating, he’d subsisted on ramen from the commissary, forgoing entirely the meals served to him for fear the food was poisoned. He refused to let his mother come visit him, afraid that she’d put herself in harm’s way by setting foot in the J . he acute paranoia was a symptom of his mental illness, which various doctors have diagnosed as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, according to his mother.
riverfronttimes.com
Though Edward was in the section of the jail for inmates with mental-health needs, everything about his environment exacerbated his underlying mental illness. His phone calls home had gotten shorter and shorter. He asked his mother why he was locked up and when he could go home. He did not understand why he was incarcerated, she says. And while many of his fears were rooted in delusion, he faced real, physical danger in the J . he RFT is using “Ed-
