Daniel Chong, a University of California San Diego student, won a $4.1 million lawsuit against the federal Drug Enforcement Agency due to his accidental confinement in a metal holding cell for five days. Chong was mistakenly held without food, water, or bathroom facilities – he was so convinced that he was about to die that he began to carve “Sorry Mom” into his own arm as a way of saying goodbye.
The incident occurred in April 2012. Chong, who at the time was a 23-year-old senior engineering major, was visiting a friend’s house on 4/20 to smoke marijuana. On the morning of the 21st, DEA agents raided the house and found guns and ammunition, marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and over 18,000 MDMA pills – a drug more commonly known as ecstasy. Chong and eight other students were taken into custody at the DEA field office in Kearny Mesa, California.
After an interview, agents decided that Chong was not affiliated with the distribution of prohibited substances, and that they would not be prosecuting him for the consumption of marijuana. Seven other arrested students were taken to the county jail, and the last one was released. Officials informed Chong that they believed he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time – they locked him in a metal holding cell and told him “Hang tight, we’ll come get you in a minute.” “A minute” ended up turning into another four and a half days.
Without any means of sustenance, Chong was forced to drink his own urine to survive – he urinated onto a metal bench to collect the fluid. He attempted to trigger the sprinkler system in the cell, to no avail. Once Chong had accepted the likelihood of his death, he began using a shard of his broken eyeglasses to carve a goodbye message into his own flesh. “All I wanted was my sanity,” Chong said of those last hours in the cell.
Chong was finally discovered after pushing his shoelaces through the cell door and screaming for help. Five or six agents found him covered in feces and suffering from hallucinations in the cell, convinced that agents were trying to kill him by pumping poisonous gas through the vents. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where it was discovered that he was severely dehydrated, with kidney failure, cramps, and a perforated esophagus. Chong was hospitalized for another five days and lost 15 pounds.
After the incident was discovered in April, the DEA issued an unusual public apology, but has declined to comment since the news of the lawsuit broke. The Justice Department’s inspector general is still looking into the details of what happened. The San Diego police department has referred all queries to the DEA.
Chong’s attorneys said that the federal agency is still unsure how the confinement happened, and that no one has been punished. Chong seems to have accepted and moved past his ordeal, and stated that “it sounded like it was an accident – a really, really bad, horrible accident.”
