Girl gravely injured in suicide attempt at Copper Lake prison

Waterford — By the time a guard at Copper Lake School for Girls got to her cell, Sydni Briggs was hanging by a homemade noose slung over a door hinge.

Fluid was coming from the 16-year-old’s mouth. She wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

Guards and a nurse performed CPR on her for at least 20 minutes while they waited for paramedics to arrive at the troubled juvenile prison in Wisconsin’s rural north.

Briggs survived but emerged from a months-long coma with serious brain damage.

Her suicide attempt came after a series of warning signs that prison staff failed to act on, according to records reviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Three weeks before she tried to kill herself, Briggs told a prison psychiatrist she had suicidal thoughts and sometimes viewed life as not worth living. She began discussing for the first time a traumatic event that was haunting her. And at least twice during her four months at Copper Lake, she scratched her arms until they bled, according to the records provided by Briggs' attorney.

Yet on that morning in November 2015 Briggs was not on a special monitoring schedule used to prevent suicidal inmates from hurting themselves.

Before her suicide attempt, Briggs hit her call light, which is supposed to summon a guard. It is unclear how long it took a guard to respond to her cell.

Guards have come under criticism for their handling of other suicide attempts at Copper Lake and its companion facility, Lincoln Hills School for Boys. One former guard who was not involved in Briggs' incident told the Journal Sentinel last year that suicide attempts were so common that he struggled to keep from becoming numb to them.

Prison leaders did not know until recently the gravity of the situation: They only began tracking the number of suicide and self-harm attempts at Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills last year.

The suicide attempts are among a host of problems at Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills, which have been under criminal investigation for child abuse and neglect for two years. Those problems spilled into public view in December 2015, when 50 special agents and attorneys raided the prison complex.

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker’s administration must also contend with litigation from current and former inmates. To avoid a lawsuit last year, the state paid $300,000 to a former Lincoln Hills inmate who had to have parts of two toes amputated after a guard slammed a metal door on his foot.

Last week, the Juvenile Law Center, a national advocacy group, and American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin filed a class-action lawsuit alleging problems persist at Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills despite the ongoing criminal investigation. That suit seeks to curb the use of pepper spray and solitary confinement.

Briggs, of Janesville, is not involved in that lawsuit. Her mother is planning to file one of her own this week.

A Journal Sentinel investigation last month found that Walker and other officials missed repeated warnings at the prison complex, which is located about 30 miles north of Wausau. Contributing to the problems were lax management, poor communication, confusion over policies and staff shortages.

In the first 10 months of 2016, there were 135 attempts of self-harm at Copper Lake alone, according to prison records. That comes to an attempt almost once every other day in an institution that holds 20 to 35 inmates at a time.

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Last year, one Copper Lake visitor said she sat by in horror as she watched staff wait at least 5 minutes to respond to an inmate who was making gagging and choking noises as she apparently attempted suicide.

In another incident, a Lincoln Hills inmate said a guard was slow to arrive when his roommate attempted suicide. The inmate struggled to hold his roommate around the waist as he was hanging to keep his noose slack while he waited for guards to respond.

The lawsuit filed last week alleges up to a fifth of the inmates at Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills are in solitary confinement at any given time, with some inmates held in isolation for months, getting out just an hour or two a day. Briggs was held in solitary confinement before she was moved to the mental health wing, where the suicide attempt occurred.

Jessica Feierman, associate director of the Juvenile Law Center, said even healthy adults can become suicidal after spending time in solitary confinement. The risk is higher when young people like Briggs are deprived of human contact, she said.

"Our primary concern is that solitary confinement harms young people and this case is exactly why that's dangerous," she said.

Briggs is now in a rehabilitation center relearning the most basic of life skills. She cannot walk and has trouble feeding herself. She talks in the lilting tone of a small child and has drastically diminished mental capacity.

Her mother sat by her bed for months as she prayed that she would come out of her coma. She kept an online journal about her progress on a gofundme.com page.

In March, she wrote: "My Sydni used to follow me around nonstop talking for a good hour or more and i would say to her could you please just be quiet for 5 min. Now all I wish for is to hear her voice."

Discipline instead of help

A Rock County judge sent Briggs to Copper Lake in July 2015 after she broke into a Janesville liquor store with a friend and stole several bottles of vodka and gin. The judge initially put Briggs in an alcohol and drug treatment center, but moved her to Copper Lake after she ran away from the treatment facility and a group home.

Two months after she arrived, Briggs’ social worker noted she was having difficulty adjusting to Copper Lake. At least twice, she scratched her arms with her fingernails until they bled.

Her mother said she was not told about those episodes, despite a prison policy that parents and guardians be informed of such matters. Other parents have told the Journal Sentinel they have similarly been left in the dark when their children cut themselves or attempted suicide.

Around this time, Briggs first began telling officials about an event from her childhood that had traumatized her. Briggs' attorney shared medical records and other documents with the Journal Sentinel, but blacked out references to the childhood incident.

Struggling to cope with that memory, Briggs found she couldn't sleep and was often depressed, records show.

Briggs “has had brief suicidal thoughts although she says, ‘I know I would never do that,’ ” prison psychiatrist Gabriella Hangiandreou wrote in a report after seeing Briggs in October 2015. “Sydni denies global hopelessness but does report occasional passive thoughts that life is not worth living."

Hangiandreou encouraged her to alert staff if she had thoughts about harming herself, the report shows.

Hangiandreou works at the Medical College of Wisconsin and treats inmates through a contract with the Department of Corrections.

She will stop seeing Copper Lake inmates at the end of this month, according to the department. Hangiandreou did not return calls and a spokeswoman for the Medical College said she could not comment on what happened because of medical privacy laws.

On Oct. 26, 2015, Briggs bit the inside of her mouth so hard that it bled. She spat blood on a table and told a nurse she'd chewed up the inside of her cheek out of anxiety, records show.

“My anxiety is worse lately,” Briggs said that day, according to notes a nurse took. “Everything is making me upset.”

Guards sent her to a segregation unit for being "disruptive" and "unsanitary."

"Instead of getting her help and taking on additional precautions, they disciplined her, which is an antiquated way of dealing with self-harm," said her attorney, Eric Haag.

Found hanging in cell

Within the next two weeks, Briggs was transferred from a 7-foot-by-10-foot solitary confinement cell to one in the mental health wing. Unlike some of the rooms in that wing, her concrete block cell did not have a camera.

It had been three weeks since she told the psychiatrist she was thinking about suicide.

At 7:54 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2015, a guard found her hanging in her cell by pieces of a T-shirt tied in a noose.

"Who's got the 911 knife?" he yelled, referring to the fishhook-shaped knife staff use to cut nooses.

Briggs' lips and fingers had turned blue, according to a nurse's report. A plastic chair was tipped over next to the door where she hung.

Another guard ran into the room, cut Briggs down, removed the pink strand of T-shirt around her neck and called for someone to bring an automatic defibrillator, according to prison incident reports.

Guards shocked Briggs' chest and began performing CPR. They summoned a nurse and the communications office called 911 within two or three minutes of guards finding Briggs, records show.

Paramedics arrived 20 to 25 minutes later, depending on differing accounts.

The Department of Corrections has not provided full details about what happened that day. The Journal Sentinel first asked about the incident within two weeks. At the time, department spokeswoman Joy Staab issued a statement that said only, "I have no recent reports of suicide at Copper Lake School."

Briggs' attorney said staff should have called 911 within seconds, not minutes.

“You’ve got a kid hanging in her room with no pulse and you don’t call 911 immediately?” Haag said.

At some point before she hanged herself, Briggs turned on the call light above her cell door. That signals to staff everything from an emergency to a simple request to use the bathroom.

Guards complain inmates frequently turn on call lights for minor issues. Inmates contend that guards often ignore the call lights for long stretches.

Briggs' mother, Jennifer, said Copper Lake’s superintendent at the time, John Ourada, told her that staff got to Sydni within 4 minutes.

The Department of Corrections has declined to release surveillance video from the hall outside of Briggs' cell that may show how long the call light was on before a guard found her. Her attorney will be seeking the video as part of the lawsuit.

Months-long vigil

Within hours of her daughter's suicide attempt, Jennifer Briggs got to the Marshfield hospital where Sydni Briggs had been flown. She was comatose, in a neck brace and hooked up to a breathing machine.

For nine days, Jennifer Briggs didn’t know if her daughter would live. Lincoln County Coroner Paul Proulx got a call telling him a death may be imminent, reports show.

A chaplain talked to Jennifer Briggs about removing a feeding tube — an idea she quickly rejected.

“They just kept telling me there was really no hope, that she was going to be a vegetable if she woke up," Jennifer Briggs said recently. "I just kept telling them no, that they’re wrong. I just refused to believe.”

She stayed by her bed, watching the display on her daughter's breathing machine.

“I lived for those little pink lines on the machine because that meant she was breathing on her own,” Jennifer Briggs said.

She kept vigil over her daughter for four months. Finally, Sydni Briggs abruptly woke up. The extent of the damage was immediately apparent.

Her mother read her lips for months while Briggs developed the ability to put enough breath behind her words to be heard.

Little by little, Sydni Briggs has worked on developing her brain and improving her motor skills. Her care is expected to cost millions of dollars over the course of her life because she will need constant care, according to her attorney.

'It was all bad'

Belted into a wheelchair, Briggs on a recent morning wore gray Air Jordan basketball shoes, a pink sparkly T-shirt and a constant smile.

Between occasional muscle spasms, she talked about country singer Luke Bryan, Uno, Candy Crush Saga and SpongeBob SquarePants. A sly smile on her lips, she teased her mom about how old she must be now that she has a grandson.

Briggs is staying at the Lakeview Specialty Hospital and Rehab center in Waterford and is working on standing and walking. Her muscles atrophied during the four months she was in a coma and so far she has been able to take only a few of steps using a walker.

Nurses held a surprise party for her 18th birthday last month, waking her at midnight so she could celebrate. Everyone had a great time, but Sydni Briggs doesn’t remember it.

Asked by a reporter if she knew what put her in the rehabilitation center, Briggs turned to her mother.

“Mom, do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

“You had an accident,” her mother said.

“How?”

"We'll talk about it later," she said, looking down at her daughter and touching her arm.

Briggs has some memories from before the suicide attempt, such as playing with her pugs, Dexter and Lucy, and riding her friend's horse, Shaq.

She said she remembered Copper Lake, too, but couldn’t provide any details about her time there.

“I don’t know,” she said when asked what she recalled. “Nothing good. It was all bad.”

Patrick Marley can be reached at patrick.marley@jrn.com and twitter.com/patrickdmarley.