Again, a Father's Haunting Last Words: 'I Can't Breathe'

“I can’t breathe.”

The final words of Michael Sabbie ― a 35-year-old stay-at-home father of four ― echoes Eric Garner’s haunting last words two years ago as he was laying underneath a pile of New York City police officers on a Staten Island street corner. 

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“I can’t breathe.”

Sabbie was found unresponsive on the morning of July 22, 2015, lying in the cell of the Bi-State Jail, a for-profit, privately-run prison on the Texas-Arkansas border where the guards' starting hourly pay is $US10. His death was one of more than 800 deaths in police custody documented by the Huffington Post since Sandra Bland died in a Texas prison on July 13, 2014. 

Sabbie's death, from cardiac arrest, would likely never raise eyebrows were it not for a video of the night before he was found inert in his cell. In the 9-minute video, Sabbie – a visibly obese man, much like Garner – tells the correctional officers who are pepper-spraying him: "I can't breathe."

“I can’t breathe, sir. Please! Please!” Sabbie repeated as guards held him up against a wall.

“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” Sabbie continued as he was forced into the showers.

“Can’t breathe,” Sabbie said one final time, as guards removed his handcuffs and left him on the floor of his cell overnight. He was dead by the morning, having spent just 48 hours in police custody.

A medical examiner deemed Sabbie’s death “natural,” saying his obesity had led to significant heart muscle damage ― an unavoidable tragedy. But the video discovered by the Huffington Post raises questions about that conclusion. 

“If you just looked at the cause of death, you would think that Michael died of some sort of hypertensive heart condition, and that may be true,” said Erik J. Heipt, one of the attorneys representing the Sabbie family told HuffPost. “But if we didn’t have a video, we’d never know that he had been begging for help due to his shortness of breath and inability to breathe. We’d never know that he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 19 times in the nine minutes that we hear in that video.”

Heipt and his law partner, Edwin Budge, are no strangers to representing families of people who have died in jails. But Budge said this video was “without a doubt among one of the most outrageous.”

“Clearly he’s a person in a state of medical crisis, in medical need, asking for help, and the response to his pleas for medical help is inhumane, which is a term I don’t use lightly,” Budge said.

According to David C. Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, preventable deaths characterized as “natural” is a “common phenomenon” and a “huge problem” in jails across the country.

“We often find that someone’s death is characterized as ‘natural causes’ ― maybe it was cancer, maybe it was heart disease,” Fathi said. “But if you look at the medical record, you often find egregious neglect and denial of care. If someone dies of cancer that went totally untreated, is that death from natural causes?”

According to a police support, Sabbie was arrested on July 19, 2015, after getting into an argument with his wife. She told officers Sabbie had allegedly threatened her, and Sabbie was soon whisked away, arrested for third-degree assault on a family member, a misdemeanor.

A job listing for a position at the correctional center says the position of guard pays is US $10 per hour, and that the position requires “zero experience as a correctional officer”.

Matthew Campbell, a lawyer that is representing the family of another inmate who died in the Bi State Jail, said the facility is “by far the least secure jail” he’s ever been in.

“The guy behind the big glass window doesn’t have me sign in, doesn’t ask for ID. There’s no metal detector, he doesn’t check my bag, buzzes me into the attorney meeting room,” Campbell said. “It could have been a briefcase full of cocaine and guns, and I could have left it there in the room and nobody would have been any the wiser.”  

Throughout his 48 hours in custody, Sabbie had told jail staff he was having difficulty breathing. After he became concerned that he might have pneumonia , he went to the nurse, Tiffany Venable, who told him she had seen no symptoms.

Even during his court appearance, where he pleaded not guilty and had a bond set at US $2500, a court bailiff observed  that Sabbie was “sweating very heavily and coughing.” Sabbie had told the court that he had been spitting up blood and needed to go to the hospital.

The altercation shown in the video apparently began when Sabbie wanted to use the phone at the booking desk, but was told to return to his cell by an officer, who claimed that Sabbie then turned aggressively toward him. That's when he grabbed him, with other officers jumping in.

Heipt believes that Sabbie had pulmonary edema, which is when there is excess fluid in the lungs due to a heart condition. The treatable condition, if detected properly, could have prevented Sabbie’s death. The State Crime Laboratory’s Medical Examiner Division found that Sabbie died of “hypertensive arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” and say the incident in the video “played a minimal role in the decedent’s death, and may not have contributed at all to his death.”

“This is not a tin-foil hat conspiracy; it happens all the time,” Heipt said. “The jail or the county investigates itself, inmates aren’t interviewed, medical records are not reviewed, video recordings are lost or destroyed, and medical examiners who are in charge of determining the cause of death are not given complete information, and so the cause of death is either undetermined, wrong, or doesn’t tell the whole picture.”

“The American public has no idea what’s taking place, and because of the lack of public awareness, there’s a corresponding lack of public outrage,” he added. “So politicians on the local and national level have ignored it. Consequently, jails are understaffed and underfunded, money is saved by denying medications and medical care. Funding issues also lead to inexperienced and unqualified corrections officers being hired, as well as a lack of training.”

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In a statement, the Sabbie family said they “cannot conceive of how something like this could happen to an American citizen” like Sabbie.

“I can’t put into words how devastated my children and I are after the loss of Michael,” Sabbie’s wife Teresa said in a statement. “He was my backbone and best friend. My children lost a wonderful father who wanted the best for his family. A piece of our heart is gone, and I pray to God for justice. This was a tragedy that should never have happened.”

The Department of Justice said on  Aug. 1, 2016, almost a year later, that they would not be prosecuting anyone in connection with her husband’s death.