Helpless: The Tragic Story of an Addict

Nicole Blair died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody and no one thought anything of it.

On June 4th, 2014 two Chicago Police officers, who were patrolling the area of Division and Lawndale, approached a woman named Nicole Blair. Nicole was stumbling around on the sidewalk while drinking from a clear plastic bottle. Officers found that the bottle contained Dimitri’s Vodka, a cheap vodka that sells for around ten dollars. They placed her under arrest for drinking on the public way, and began conducting a custodial search. When asked if she had anything illegal on her, Nicole immediately told officers that she had possession of pills. Officers found that she had 13 pills of Vicodin on her, which has an estimated value of $45 on the streets. Nicole Blair was taken to the 11th District Police Station for processing. Upon arrival, her name was run through the system and her name came up clear with zero warrants, wants, or investigative alerts. She was being charged with Drinking on the Public Way and Possession of a Class 4 Controlled Substance.

When Nicole Blair was processed, Mary Ruglic (Detention Aide) observed that she showed signs of withdrawal but that she was not under influence of alcohol or drugs. Despite showing signs of having withdrawal, Blair was alert and interacting with other detainees. When asked for emergency contact, Nicole refused. She was placed in cell B4 at 11pm.

The next morning, Nicole was found unresponsive in her cell at 8:05am. The lockup keeper, Rose Malone, radioed for help, an officer arrived and called for the Chicago Fire Department saying that an inmate was “having chest problems” in order to get a quicker response. Upon arriving at the scene, they found an unconscious Blair sprawled out on the bed with two pairs of pants on and her hands inside of her shirt. She was declared dead at 8:10am. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office found that she died from a Vicodin overdose.

“I heard someone heavily breathing and a lot of violent coughing throughout the night.”

The Chicago Police Department launched an investigation into her death. Everyone interviewed from the lockup keepers to other detainees all said the same thing “I heard someone heavily breathing and a lot of violent coughing throughout the night.” Despite hearing these sounds from 11pm that night to 8am the next morning, everyone was seemingly indifferent. No one bothered to check to see where the source of the sound was coming from nor did they check on Blair. Everyone was indifferent and complacent, a trend that followed Nicole Blair throughout her life.

I reached out to the reporter, Michael Lansu, who wrote the short story on her death but he replied saying that he did not remember much of anything about it, adding that “Sometimes people fall through the cracks”. An unnamed officer from the 11th district said that it’s common for people to die in the lockup especially in the 11th district because of the neighborhood it’s in (The 11th district police station is in one Chicago’s deadliest and poorest neighborhoods, North Lawndale). The Funeral Director of where her service was held said that it was a private cremation and that no one showed up.Detectives had a hard time finding someone who knew Blair or would admit to knowing Blair. There was not a pastor in North Lawndale who had seen Nicole in their facility at all. Blair’s death was so unnoticed that she has been taken to Small Claims Court four times since June of 2014 and to no one’s surprise, she hasn’t shown up. She had the vaguest news story possibly ever written about her death and no one blinked. Nicole Blair was alone in her cell when she died and she was alone in her final days. It’s not so much that no one cared that she died, it’s more that she did not have anyone to care.

How does someone fall through the cracks relatively unnoticed? How does a 34 year old woman pass away in a police lockup and no one demands answers? What does one have to do to get to this point? The answer is complicated because there are a lot of answers but one thing seems to stay a constant — systematic failure on society’s behalf.

Nicole Blair was born on April 4th, 1980 and similar to her fatal Thursday, it was cold and rainy out. Earlier that day, Jimmy Carter announced sanctions to cut off Iran from the rest of the world. Her early childhood years were of those filled with the war on drugs, indoctrinating DARE programs, and Nancy Reagan’s blissfully ignorant “Say no to drugs” speeches. Nicole grew up in a Chicago where crime was high, the Fire Department was on strike, the poor were living in Cabrini Green, and the school system was beginning to fail.

When Nicole was six years old, she was involved in a car accident on US Route 57. The driver, Mauvolyene Berrien, fell asleep while the car veered off the road and landed upside down after flying 57 feet in the air. An eleven month old infant, Tyrone Adams Jr., died in the crash while Stephanie Adams, the mother, ended up in critical condition.Tyrone Adams Jr. was the son of Tyrone Adams who was drafted at pick #53 in the 1982 NBA Draft by his hometown team, the Chicago Bulls. Mauvolyene and Nicole were in stable condition. Nicole may have physically been fine, but our understanding of trauma and of the brain has changed a lot since 1986. Nicole could have been physically fine at the time, but who knows what mental trauma she could of have walked away with that was not diagnosed.

In 1998, while Congress was busy trying to impeach President Clinton over Monica Lewinsky, Nicole Blair turned 18 years old. At 18, Blair’s family kicked her out of their home never to be seen again. Blair had severe addiction problems that she refused to get help for and kept stealing from the family in order to fund her addiction, her sister recalls.

Nicole found herself in and out of the courts from that point on. She was sued by landlords for not paying rent several times. Her first major offense comes in 2007 though when she was arrested for prostitution. In January of 2008, she was taken into the Cook County Jail (The largest prison in the United States) as a pre-trial detainee. Blair was pregnant at the time, 5 months later she gave birth while in custody.

Nicole was escorted to the hospital with handcuffs and leg irons connected via a belly chain which wrapped around her waist. The Correctional officer worried that she might try to flee, so she remained restrained until the medical staff ordered that her leg irons be taken off. The correctional officer still paranoid that Nicole could end up running while giving birth, handcuffed her hands to the bed and handcuffed one ankle to the bedside.

Giving birth is described as the most painful moment of a woman’s life, however it’s a very beautiful moment as they get to meet this baby that has been living off of them for 9 months. The Dad holds the mother’s hand and provides encouragement to her while she tries to push out her soon to be child. But there Nicole was, alone and restrained. Handcuffed to the bed with a corrections officer who’s watching the clock, waiting for their shift to end.. She went through a painful 12 hours of labor while illegally handcuffed to the bed. Her newborn was whisked away from her almost immediately. Robbing her of being able to hold the entity that she took care of for nine months. Nicole was handcuffed for three whole days until she was discharged from the hospital and sent back to her prison cell. Her daughter was sent to go live with the father Dexter Williams, a gang member, who ended up getting arrested not much longer after Nicole gave birth. Nicole was released from prison a year later, however she never met her own daughter.

The practice used on Blair during labor is illegal in Illinois. In 1999, Illinois passed a law to ban the practice of shackling female inmates who were in labor or who were being taken to a hospital to deliver a child. In 2011, 80 women sued Sheriff Dart for illegal shackling during birth. Nicole Blair was one of those 80 women who alleged that when giving birth, they were restrained. The women were awarded $35,000 each in 2012.

Nicole Blair was arrested again for prostitution in 2012, and sentenced to a year in prison. After being released in 2013, she moved into a room in an apartment complex in North Lawndale. It was a yellow brick apartment complex with a black metal spiked fence with several “Beware of Dog” signs surrounding the building. The gate was zip-tied to the fence with two locks requiring two different keys in order to open it. All of this to prevent people from reaching the building’s staircase. The staircase is protected by a door with three locks and a gated screen door in front of it and motion activated lights on top of the door frame. In a neighborhood like North Lawndale, security is vital. The front left window to her apartment was shattered from bullet holes and the front right window held a picture of the Virgin Mary. On the corner of the building is a fire hydrant that has been stripped of its copper rendering it nearly useless in case of fire. Across from the complex is an empty lot that is filled with trash. This is a scene you will see every few blocks in North Lawndale.

North Lawndale was not always like this, it used to be a very important neighborhood in the city. It’s where Sears and Roebuck started and was a Jewish enclave up until 1950. Throughout the 50s and 60s, the neighborhood began shifting to be mostly African-American. Martin Luther King lived in North Lawndale for a while but after his assassination in 1968, the Chicago race riots followed in North Lawndale. These riots would define North Lawndale both culturally and physically. The massive riots caused billions of dollars in property damage, from which the neighborhood has yet to recover still to this day.

Despite living in North Lawndale, Blair had a bit of money from her lawsuit and a place where she could call home now. She could begin turning her life around. She lived with the Kirkman family, who at the time was in a gang war with Dexter William’s gang. It all started when Tevin Kirkman was killed in a drive-by shooting planned by the 4Corner Hustlers right outside of his Grandmother’s (Mary Kirkman) apartment before his cousin’s graduation party. The family denied that Tevin had any gang connections but the Chicago Police Department’s internal memos showed that Tevin and his brother were in fact in a gang with their cousins. The Police Department saw the prospects of a gang war breaking out, and took precautionary action by arresting several Kirkmans and several members of the 4Corner Hustlers. With the situation defused, Mary Kirkman could devote a lot of time to watching after her grandchildren and trying to help Nicole. She tried to get Blair help for her severe alcohol addiction. She was so close to ditching the one thing that had plagued her entire life but she refused to get help for her addiction. After she refused help several times, Mary kicked her out of the apartment. After becoming homeless for the last time in her life, she slept on various porches around the neighborhood. Nicole turned to her old practice of prostitution to fund her addiction and it turned fatal on June 4th, 2014.

When you look at Nicole Blair’s life, you see all the opportunities she had to turn it around. It makes you wonder if Nicole was just destined to fail from the start. If she could have just shaken that addiction, she could have used the money from the lawsuit to get out of North Lawndale, and you wouldn’t be reading this story. If she had gotten proper mental health care after the car accident, maybe she would not have gotten an addiction in the first place. We could play the “What if” game all day where we infinitely digress from point to point in her life where her fortunes could have possibly changed, but the bottom line is that addiction and how we treat addicts is a problem in America.

“Be the person you needed growing up, that’s the best way to improve your neighborhood”

Blair could have been saved before she got to the 11th District Lockup. Were Rose Malone and the other on-duty lockup keepers negligent? There is certainly evidence suggesting they could have been a little more vigilant and done a little bit more. Hindsight is 20/20 in situations like this, everyone looks around and there is a fair share of blame to go around. I think that the majority of blame here is on us as a society, we have to change the way we handle addiction. I asked a Chicago Police Officer a few months ago, how one person could help improve a neighborhood like North Lawndale and he said “Be the person you needed growing up, that’s the best way to improve your neighborhood”.

Correction: The Chicago Fire Department was not on strike when Blair was born. The strike ended in March 1980, Blair was born in April of 1980.