SAN DIEGO — Corey Dean screamed for days, pleading for help. He banged on the door, vent and table, trying to get attention. He flooded his cell with dirty toilet water and smeared feces across his face and body.

Deputies in the Vista Detention Facility all but ignored him.

According to sworn testimony, three people locked up in the same unit where Dean died last week say that when deputies discovered the deceased man, they dragged his stiffened body on his mattress covered in feces from the cell and left it in plain view.

“His body was left in the middle of the dayroom for hours,” detainee Jesse Gonzales said in a declaration obtained by lawyers suing San Diego County.

“They served us breakfast while Mr. Dean was lying dead in the middle of the dayroom,” said Gonzales, who was assigned to a cell next to Dean. “They did not remove his body until shortly before serving us lunch.”

Neither the Sheriff’s Office nor county officials would discuss the sworn declarations, which were taken earlier this week and shared with the legal team defending an ongoing class action lawsuit on Friday.

“The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office will not comment at this time due to an active investigation into the incident,” a spokesperson said. “The Sheriff’s Office extends our sympathies to the Dean family and all those affected by Mr. Dean’s passing.”

In a news release this week announcing what had just become the sixth in-custody death in San Diego County jails this year, the Sheriff’s Office said Dean died early Sunday.

When deputies found him unresponsive in his cell, they immediately called for emergency help, the news release said, but paramedics were unable to revive him. He was pronounced dead at 3:20 a.m.

He was 43 years old.

Gonzales was not alone in providing details about how Dean was treated at the jail.

Two other men in the same unit as Dean also said there was more to what happened than what the Sheriff’s Office disclosed publicly.

Miguel Angel Lopez Altamirano, who has been in custody since February, said that he could see inside Dean’s cell, and it was clear that he was sick.

“Mr. Dean would spend his days screaming and yelling,” Lopez Altamirano said. “For the first couple weeks he was in the unit, his yelling was mostly unintelligible.”

Dean’s behavior grew increasingly severe.

“He would rub feces on his face and into his beard. He would eat his own feces,” Lopez Altamirano said. “He did this throughout his time in Unit E/4. His behavior caused the entire housing unit to smell bad.”

Lopez Altamirano said no one came to Dean’s assistance.

“I thought he needed serious medical and mental health help,” he said. “The deputies told me there was nothing they could do.”

Raymond Molina, who was also jailed near Dean, said in his declaration that Dean spent most of his last day alive crying out for help with no response.

“It was sad to hear a grown man in the jail yelling and crying constantly,” said Molina, whose cell was also next to Dean’s. “It sounded like he was in pain and needed help.

“But at no point during that day did any San Diego County jail staff attempt to help Mr. Dean. Late that night, Mr. Dean stopped yelling and went quiet.”

The declarations were obtained by attorney Benjamin Holston, one of the civil-rights lawyers suing San Diego County over sheriff’s practices inside county jails.

Holston was able to interview the men because of his status as a lawyer litigating the class-action case.

The San Diego Union-Tribune tried multiple times to schedule a visit with Gonzales. An online portal initially said a visit needed to be scheduled via phone, then said no slots were available.

No one answered repeated calls to a phone line the county has set up to schedule visits.

Attorney Gay Grunfeld, who dispatched Holston to Vista this week, said Dean’s death is the latest in a continuing series of ugly and unnecessary fatalities.

“We will be requesting additional information from the county about this death,” she said. “But based on the testimony of these three witnesses, it appears that the county’s deliberate indifference to the needs of individuals with mental illness continues to have tragic and devastating consequences.”

Court records show that what the three men say happened to Dean is not without precedent.

Among the roughly two-dozen lawsuits tied to jail deaths that the county is currently defending, more than half involve a person diagnosed with a serious mental illness, and several allege significant neglect by jail and medical staff.

Perhaps the most extreme case is the 2022 death of Lonnie Rupard, later ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner, who cited “ineffective” care from jail staff.

The 46-year-old struggled with schizophrenia and had lost 60 pounds in the three months he was incarcerated. At 5 feet, 9 inches tall, he weighed only 105 pounds at the time of his death, according to his autopsy report.

Rupard died from pneumonia, malnutrition and dehydration, the medical examiner found. His cell was smeared with feces and strewn with trash, indicating he lacked proper care for days.

Roselee Bartolacci, who was developmentally disabled and had schizoaffective disorder, was placed in administrative segregation — a form of solitary confinement — after being deemed “uncooperative” by jail staff.

The 32-year-old woman repeatedly refused medication, food and liquids and was hospitalized twice, according to a lawsuit filed by her mother, Roseann.

Records from one hospital visit describe Roselee as covered in feces and urine. The second time she was admitted, she was suffering from acute renal failure, malnutrition, sepsis and several other ailments.

An emergency room doctor noted that she “had a high probability of imminent or life-threatening deterioration,” the lawsuit says.

“They left Roselee in her cell crying and moaning and sucking her thumb, speaking in gibberish and sitting in her own urine,” Julia Yoo, her mother’s lawyer, told The San Diego Union-Tribune last year.

On May 25, 2023, medical staff noted that Roselee had refused food and liquid for 48 hours. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell.

Aaron Bonin, 43, was removed from life support on Nov. 1, 2022, after suffering cardiac arrest in San Diego’s Central Jail a week earlier. He had been transferred to the jail from a state psychiatric hospital for a hearing to determine whether he should remain at the hospital involuntarily.

In addition to severe mental illness, Bonin had been diagnosed with kidney disease that required dialysis.

The night before his scheduled dialysis, he began pleading to be taken to the hospital, prompting men in nearby cells to ask deputies to check on him, to no avail, according to a lawsuit filed by his mother.

He was found unresponsive on the floor of his cell at 3:16 a.m. during a routine safety check. He remained in a coma for eight days until his mother opted to withdraw life support.

Other lawsuits pending against the county describe people with mental illness being placed in solitary confinement or, conversely, being killed by a cellmate with a history of violence.

In a report submitted as part of a class-action lawsuit challenging conditions in San Diego jails, Dr. Pablo Stewart, a psychiatrist and correctional health care expert, described San Diego jails as “uniquely dysfunctional” when it comes to caring for people with mental illness.

“In my more than 35 years evaluating and working in detention facilities, I have come across very few, if any, mental health care systems so lacking in effective systems and levels of care,” he wrote.

Corey Michael Dean had been arrested June 15 on suspicion of burglary and vandalism.

He was scheduled to be evaluated for mental competency at an Aug. 11 hearing.

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