Daniel Chong, Student forgotten in DEA cell for 5 days gets $4.1 Million in compensation

A University of California San Diego student, Daniel Chong, left unattended in a holding cell for five days by the Drug Enforcement Administration has settled a lawsuit for $4.1 million, his attorney said, Tuesday.

“This was a mistake of unbelievable and unimaginable proportions,” said attorney Julia Yoo.

Daniel Chong, 25, drank his own urine to survive and even wrote a farewell note to his mother before authorities discovered him severely dehydrated.
Chong was detained on the morning of April 21 when DEA agents raided a house they suspected was being used to distribute MDMA, commonly known as “ecstasy.”

Mr Chong was originally told he would not be charged after he was taken into custody along with nine of his friends and seized about 18,000 ecstasy pills, marijuana, prescription medications, hallucinogenic mushrooms, several guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition from the house, according to the DEA.
He was handcuffed and put in a 5-foot by 10-foot cell, with no windows, where an officer told him: “Hang tight, we’ll come get you in a minute.”
He told US media that he believed that for the whole of the first day, saying: “It just seemed impossible that they would forget me in there.”
Eventually he started screaming, kicking the cell door as hard as he could, and pushing shoelaces and ripped-up pieces of his jacket underneath the door all in a desperate bid to get someone’s attention.
His lawyers said that he heard footsteps outside, but no one responded to his calls for help.
He tried to break a fire sprinkler in the ceiling to get some water, but when that didn’t work he had to drink his own urine, and said that: “If it wasn’t for that I would’ve died.”
On the third day, with no food or water While detained, Chong had given up and accepted death, using a shard of glass from his glasses to carve “Sorry Mom” onto his arm as a farewell message, Yoo said. Chong lost 15 pounds and suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

After more than four days passed, the door finally opened. Officers found Mr Chong lying on the floor covered in his own faeces. He says he can remember the shocked look on their faces.
“He’s the strongest person I have ever met,” Yoo said. “As a result of his case, it’s one of the primary reasons the DEA placed a nationwide policy that calls on each agent at satellite offices to check on the well-being of prisoners in their cells on a daily basis,” Yoo said.
In the wake of the ordeal in April 2012, the DEA issued a rare public apology and introduced a swathe of new national detention standards, including daily inspections and a need to have cameras in cells.
And Mr Chong, a student at the University of California San Diego, seemed to accept their contrition. He said: “The Department of Justice have shown me every step of the way that they did take it seriously, and their apology was sincere. I do see it as an accident. A grave one, but an accident nonetheless.”