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Inmate's death brought end to week of torment

During his seven days at the Hernando County Jail, Daniel Ray Warren was tortured and raped, inmates say.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published December 11, 2005

BROOKSVILLE - Daniel Ray Warren spent just seven days in the Hernando County Jail, long enough to bring out the worst in some of his fellow inmates.

They teased, taunted and tormented the 39-year-old shrimper. They punched him in the face and stomach and threatened to pour shampoo down his throat and poked him with a broomstick. And, according to statements of four different inmates, he was raped.

On that seventh day, Nov. 2, an inmate knocked one of Warren's teeth out at lunchtime. He was treated and taken to a cell where at 5 p.m. a guard found him turning blue, a sheet tightened around his neck.

Warren died soon after.

While an autopsy report has not yet been issued and an investigation is still open into the cause of his death, jail warden Arvil "Butch" Chapman emphasized that his employees did nothing wrong. A report from Darrell Powell, a supervisor at the jail, maintained that Warren got himself into trouble by running up gambling debts and then tried to escape his creditors.

"There may have been some physical, and psychological abuse towards inmate Warren," Powell wrote, "however inmate Daniel Warren also antagonized the abuse by his actions. . ."

Even in death, Warren could illicit strong negative reactions. The day after Warren's death, his estranged wife was bubbly.

"I may sound like a cold-hearted b----, but I couldn't care two s---s," she told the St. Petersburg Times. "The only thing that gets me is that he doesn't have to serve his prison time."

But Warren, who grew up in Hernando County, also left behind people who loved him. Rhonda Stewart, his former girlfriend, is raising the 12-year-old daughter they had together, and she has been meeting with attorney Peyton Hyslop to talk about a lawsuit.

"I think that there is neglect and abuse going on in that jail and no one is doing anything about it," said Stewart, who is a sergeant at the state-run Hernando Correctional Institution next door to the county jail.

While the investigation is pending, a theory is that Warren killed himself rather than be subjected to any more torment. But more than a month later, questions remain. And last week, Hyslop, a former county judge, said he was looking into whether another inmate was in Warren's cell when he was strangled.

"I've been told by one of my clients who was an inmate that an inmate was in the cell at the time the sheet was around his neck and the officers found him," Hyslop said.

Jail officials have insisted Warren was alone.

Warren was sentenced to 37 months in state prison for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. His stay at the Hernando jail, which is run by the private Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), was only a stopover on his way to the state prison.

"I had a broken arm completely in two, eight broken ribs, cheek was glued and swelled shut," she told the Times last month.

His family and friends say he was forced to take a plea agreement because his public defender hadn't adequately prepared.

In jail, Warren quickly made enemies. Inmate Harvey Langley said Warren winked at him while rubbing his own genitals. Langley said he entered Warren's cell one night and threatened and punched him. Langley was holding a broomstick during one confrontation with Warren, but says he never used it against him.

Another inmate, Michael Gould, said he witnessed Warren being sexually assaulted. There is no other detail in the jail records, and spokeswoman Cathie Sullivan said that claim had not been substantiated.

Truth is an elusive thing in any jail, but in records of CCA's own investigation, one inmate after another talks about Warren's suffering.

Brian Southall can be seen on surveillance video breaking out one of Warren's teeth in a lunchtime fight. He said it was an accident. "I am the one that elbowed him, but it was an accident," Southall told Powell.

"I have been taking up for that man because what they were doing to him was not right. . . . All them Spanish guys in there were sexually assaulting that man and it ain't right."

Inmate Ross Lankford said Warren told him that "he had been gang raped, and that he was going to kill himself." However, Powell's report says Lankford never got near enough to Warren's cell to talk to him.

Inmate Joseph Destio requested to see Powell the day after Warren died. He, too, had heard that Warren was raped. He also heard the inmates were poking Warren with a broom handle at 2 a.m. one day. Destio said he witnessed more abuse when he walked by Warren's cell. He saw Langley and Jeffery Brown in there.

Destio said he heard Langley tell Brown to yank out Warren's tooth. Then Langley told Brown to pour shampoo down Warren's throat.

Sullivan, the jail spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail to the Times that the jail "has a zero tolerance" regarding inmate assaults and "take(s) such allegations very seriously." But she refused to comment further while the incident is being investigated by the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.

The section of the jail where Warren died has two levels. Warren was on the bottom. An overhead camera is between 50 and 100 feet from the cell. The Times reviewed a recording of events that were captured by this camera when Warren was discovered near death. It is impossible to make out details inside the cell, and Warren's body is barely visible.

Jail officials said the last time the camera picked up any motion in the cell was about 4:42 p.m.

A camera much closer to the cell could have shown what was happening except that it wasn't plugged in, said Jim Gantt, the county's purchasing director who manages the contract with CCA. The jail was being renovated and the new camera had not yet been activated.

Sue Coleman, Warren's mother, wants answers. The 58-year-old woman sleeps in her son's room and wears his shirts.

When Warren went to court on Oct. 27, he told his mother he probably wouldn't be coming back for a while, she remembered. He called his mother on Monday Oct. 31, but she was out trick-or-treating with her grandchildren. He tried twice more the next day but missed her again.

On Wednesday, she got a call from the jail. "Oh, good, that's Danny," she thought.

Instead it was a woman from the jail. She doesn't know the woman's name, but said this is what she told her: "Mrs. Coleman, I'm just calling to let you know they took your son to Brooksville Regional Hospital because he died."

"That was a really cold way to tell me . . .," she said. "I threw the phone on the floor and just started screaming."

Coleman moved from Ohio to Brooksville in 1980 when her son was 14. He dropped out of Springstead High School, worked as a night manager at McDonalds, then ran machinery at OR Plastics. Warren earned his GED, had his first daughter, and fell in love with the sea.

"He would tell us about how calm the water was some nights and how rough on others," Warren's best friend, Glen Matthews, wrote in his eulogy. "I found my calling in life, Glen, he would say. No one will keep me off the water."

They called him Lieutenant Dan, after the character in Forrest Gump.

Coleman said she thinks her son was trying to get word to her about the danger he faced in the jail.

"I want people to know if their daughter or son goes in there, they're not protected. They don't know if they're going to get to come home or not. They really don't," Coleman said. "My son should not have died in that jail."

[Last modified December 11, 2005, 02:15:36]