The prisoner wore no underwear.

Or socks. Or shoes.

David Hastings said he was led away from the Orange County Jail medical wing just after midnight on April 5, 2014, wearing nothing more than a white paper jail-issue jumpsuit. His hands and feet were shackled to his waist.

Hastings was wanted 2,600 miles away in Fort Myers, Fla., for violating a restraining order – issued in the midst of a bitter divorce – that prohibited him from contacting his ex-wife or children. Hastings, who owned a nutritional supplement company in Newport Beach, would later admit he exchanged Facebook messages like “I love you” with his 13-year-old daughter while he was in Orange County and she was in Florida.

It is important to note that on April 5, 2014, Hastings had been arrested, not convicted, for sending messages to his daughter.

In the chilly darkness, he was being extradited from the Men’s Central Jail in Santa Ana to face a judge in Fort Myers.

That court appearance would not happen quickly.

Hastings said he spent the next 15 days hurtling across more than 8,000 miles, zig-zagging across 31 states and picking up 33 prisoners. During the ride, Hastings would be introduced to the grueling world of inmate transportation, where two-agent teams, driving all day and night, move people in custody across America.

Hastings, who has a congenital heart condition called bicuspid aortic valve disease, said he was not fed properly, was deprived of sleep, unable to shower, denied medicine and medical attention and neglected to the point he nearly died in the back of an overcrowded Ford E350 extradition van.

What happened in April 2014 is the subject of a civil lawsuit Hastings filed March 10 in U.S. District Court in Florida’s Middle District.

Hastings claims his civil rights were violated when he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by Inmate Services Corp., an Arkansas-based prisoner extradition company. Randy Cagle Jr., president of Inmate Services Corp., said his company is paid per prisoner at a rate of between 75 cents and $1.50 per mile, which is, for the counties and law enforcement agencies who pay it, a budget-conscious alternative to paying two deputies overtime and travel expenses (food, hotel and fuel) to transport each prisoner to out-of-state jurisdictions.

In two phone interviews, Cagle disputed just about every detail of Hastings’ lawsuit.

Cagle said he has a document showing that Hastings’ extradition began April 9 (not April 5). However, Cagle said he could not show The Orange County Register that document because the case is under litigation. Hastings showed the Register a document from the OC Health Care Agency, which provides services to the jail, that indicates he was released from the medical wing of the Men’s Jail at 12:25 a.m. on April 5.

“When all this comes out, he’s going to look like a damn fool,” Cagle said. “What’s cruel and unusual? He didn’t suffer an injury. We treat people the way they’re supposed to be treated.”

Cagle also said Hastings was given a three-day rest period at a “housing facility” in the middle of the ride. Cagle said Hastings was given access to a shower, phone and bed during those three days. Cagle said the housing facility is located in either Arkansas or Mississippi. He wasn’t sure which. And he wasn’t sure of the specific dates. Hastings said there was no rest period in the middle of the trip.

(Graphic by Jeff Goertzen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Cagle said the van was not overcrowded and that the maximum number of male inmates allowed in the van is eight (one additional woman is allowed). Cagle said that the prisoners were fed three meals per day. He said he has meal records showing that Hastings received more that $600 worth of food on the trip.

If Cagle’s numbers are accurate, Hastings received $40 worth of food per day on a 15-day trip, or $54 per day on an 11-day trip. Hastings said he was given only a fast food sandwich or taco twice per day and a cup of water.

Hastings showed The Orange County Register records of his hospital visit in upstate New York on April 18, 2014. Initially, Cagle said that Hastings did not have to be rushed to a hospital because of a heart ailment.

“There’s no way he went to a hospital,” Cagle said. “I’m 99 percent sure of that.”

Later, Cagle called The Register and said Hastings may have gone to a hospital, but he wasn’t sure.

Cagle said that his company allows no more than eight men and one woman in their 15-seat vans. Hastings and other inmates who rode with him said there were as many as 15 prisoners in the van, some sitting on milk crates near the side doors.

INSIDE THE VAN: According to Hastings’ account, here is a look at how he and 14 other inmates, plus two drivers, were transported inside the van.

CHAINED UP: Inmates on the ends of the third- and fourth-row seats would sit on milk crates to avoid sitting on the hard edges of the seats, which caused extreme discomfort.

(Graphic by Jeff Goertzen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Cagle said he has a document – again, he did not provide the document to the Register –which he said was signed by Hastings at the end of the transport. Cagle said Hastings agreed he was treated “fairly and humanely” while he was in the custody of Inmate Services Corp. Hastings said he never signed such a document.

A search of federal court records reveals that Inmate Services Corp. has been sued nine times since 2010. Most of the lawsuits were similar to Hastings’ – sleep deprivation, two meals per day and neglect. Two of those cases were settled (no details on the amounts of the settlements were available), three cases (including the Hastings case) are pending in federal court and four were dismissed.

WILL TO SURVIVE

As he shuffled out of the jail in April 2014, Hastings joked with the guard, “Are we flying out of Orange County?”

The guard laughed, Hastings said.

“Get in the van,” Hastings remembers the guard saying.

The agents were not given Hastings’ medical records, he said. But even if they had been, they weren’t trained to help someone with a heart defect. The extent of their medical training is a CPR class, according to the Inmate Services Corp. website. The agents were not given Hastings’ medication, which included daily doses of nitroglycerine, blood thinners and beta blockers.

The vans do not have beds or restrooms. The prisoners are given water, fast-food sandwiches and bathroom breaks when the agents deem necessary.

During more than 100 hours shackled to various accused and convicted prisoners – from people suspected of welfare fraud to alimony absconders to child molesters to drug users – Hastings jotted notes on scratch paper stuffed between the pages of a smuggled Bible. His scribbles read like a Steinbeck novel – blood, defecation, speeds of 95 miles per hour, massive weight loss, freezing temperatures, fights, a malfunctioning heart. And then there was the time the van skidded off an icy road in Minnesota and the prisoners inside thought they were about to tumble into a lake.

When one particularly deranged prisoner began flipping off the police out the window of the van, Hastings didn’t know whether to laugh or fear for his life.

Today, he considers himself lucky he survived.

“At some point, your will to survive kicks in,” Hastings said.

TRAVELING COACH

The other prisoners in the van called David Hastings “coach.” He said he weighed 213 pounds when he got into the Inmate Services Corp. van.

His booking information when he arrived in Fort Myers said Hastings weighed 175. Hastings said he lost 38 pounds during the cross-country ride.

Hastings, 53, is a muscular guy with a raspy voice, who, before he launched careers as a financial adviser and nutritional supplement CEO, actually was a football and baseball coach at Southwest Florida Christian Academy in Fort Myers. Neither of his two marriages ended well.

He has been arrested several times for failure to pay his first wife child support. He said he disputed the amounts, but paid enough to stay out of jail – how much he owes is still under dispute and still in the courts.

His second wife argued that Hastings was dangerous and a Fort Myers judge granted a “no contact” order in 2013. When Hastings was found to be communicating with his daughter, the judge wanted to see him.

Hastings was arrested in Newport Beach on Jan. 16, 2014. He had a court date in Santa Ana on March 20, 2014, but he passed out from heart arrhythmia in the hallway of the Orange County courthouse. He spent five days in Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, handcuffed to his bed. Then, he was transferred to the Orange County Jail’s medical wing awaiting extradition.

That’s when the Inmate Services Corp. van showed up.

“I sat in the right corner,” Hastings said. “I was shackled and I couldn’t move. They were playing ear-crushing rap. It was blowing the speakers out of the van.”

(Graphic by Jeff Goertzen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Hastings said the van’s only scheduled stops were to get drive-through food, bathroom breaks and gas. From Orange County, they drove north to pick up a prisoner in Avenal, about 50 miles outside Bakersfield.

Hastings said the prisoners who had to relieve themselves between restroom stops urinated in cups as they drove. When they stopped, they would toss the urine out the door or the window, Hastings said.

Somewhere in central California, a prisoner asked Hastings: “Dude, what are you wearing?”

The prisoner, a convicted drug dealer named Ian Campbell, got permission from the guards to dig into his garbage bag – they traveled with their possessions in garbage bags – to give Hastings a pair of shorts.

One of the prisoners slipped Hastings a Bible. Hastings began taking notes on slips of paper and stuffing them between the Bible pages. He wrote down the names of the people who joined the ride because, he said, if they all ended up dead, investigators might find their names in the Bible.

“I felt like these guys (the agents) could make people disappear,” Hastings said.

TROUBLE IN THE VAN

In Colorado, Hastings said he began bleeding from his rectum. He said that was the first time he asked to be taken to a hospital. His request was denied.

“I felt like I was leaking,” Hastings said. “I was hemorrhaging blood.”

Paul Gose, who had been wanted for possession of methamphetamine in Texas, was picked up by Inmate Services Corp. in Oregon. Gose befriended Hastings in the van.

Gose described the same horrors that Hastings did.

“I got a bladder infection,” said Gose, who now lives in Oregon. “You can’t wipe your(self). I never smelled those smells coming off me. I was absolutely putrid and horrible.”

Gose said prisoners were given two fast-food meals per day, and that there were 17 people (including the two agents) in the van.

“You don’t sleep,” Gose said. “You pass out upright from exhaustion. You’re squished and smashed together. I’ve never seen people treated like that before. It was terrifying.

“I’m pretty sure this is called ‘kidnapping.’ ”

In Minnesota, Inmate Services Corp. picked up Crystal Gray, who was wanted on drug charges in Alabama. She was seated closest to the driver.

Gray said she couldn’t sleep because the driver was out of control.

“I feared for my life,” she said.

Hastings said the van was on a snowy mountain road when Gray started screaming that they needed to slow down.

The driver “hit a spot and took the van off the road,” Gray said. The road was adjacent to a lake, Hastings said.

“We were sliding down an embankment,” Hastings said. “Crystal was screaming. Nobody’s breathing. I’m yelling ‘Nobody shift your weight!’ ”

Hastings said it took two or three tow trucks to hoist the van out of the snow. The prisoners, he said, never got out of the van.

“That’s B.S.,” Cagle said, denying that his van had to be towed out of the snow.

HEART TROUBLE

Hastings’ heart fluttered in upstate New York.

David Hastings pauses as he talks about his 2014 arrest for a violating a no-contact restraining of his daughter in Florida.

(Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Hastings knew what was coming. It was sometime around 4 a.m. when he began to feel tingly. His heart started beating faster and faster. His chest felt like it was going to explode. He told everyone else in the van that he was going to die.

The agents “didn’t want to give him medical attention,” Gray said. “They told him they didn’t believe him.”

Hastings said the prisoners revolted when the agents wouldn’t listen. He said the prisoners started rocking the van in protest.

“My heart was like an engine with the pedal to the metal,” Hastings said.

Hastings sent The Orange County Register records – an 11-page document signed by three doctors and a hospital clerk – that showed he entered the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy, N.Y., at 5:16 a.m.

He spent five hours in the hospital, and he was treated with morphine sulfate, nitroglycerine and sodium chloride. When his vital signs returned to normal, he was processed and released.

Then he was reshackled and put back in the van.

END OF THE ROAD

Lawmakers have rarely regulated inmate transportation. In 2000, the Interstate Transportation of Dangerous Criminals Act was passed, but it is rarely enforced. The law requires guards to be properly trained in the handling of prisoners and requires that extradition companies notify local law enforcement agencies after prisoners escape.

The Inmate Services Corp. van arrived in Lee County, Fla., on April 20, 2014.

Hastings says his neck hurt. His hips were numb. Hastings struggled to get out of the van. He was happy to be going into a jail cell, anything to be away from that van.

“It was like a recurring nightmare,” Hastings said.

“I thought things like this didn’t happen in this country.”

Hastings believes that if Inmate Services Corp. was paid 75 cents per mile to get him about 2,600 miles from Orange County to Florida, it probably made about $2,000.

The day after he arrived in Fort Myers, Hastings worked a deal so the charges for contacting his daughter could be dropped. Hastings pleaded guilty instead to stalking his wife, and he was sentenced to 48 months’ probation. He flew back to Orange County in June 2014.

He paid $584 for his flight back to Southern California.

Hastings had open heart surgery on Jan. 21, 2015.

When he recovered from surgery, Hastings called Inmate Services Corp. and talked to Cagle.

“I told him you’re starving people, you’re treating them like pieces of meat and I’m going to sue,” Hastings said.

Cagle remembers that phone call.

“I knew something was wrong with the guy,” Cagle said. “He wasn’t all there. He thought he was too good to be in a transport vehicle. He views himself as upper class. With him, it starts and ends with money.”

Contact the writer: ksharon@scng.com