An Atlantic County jail inmate pleading for help was instead belittled, tied up and punched before he wound up dead, a witness told BreakingAC.
Mario Terruso Jr., 41, was pronounced dead at 1 a.m. Monday at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center’s Mainland Campus in Galloway Township, officials said.
But his issues started more than two hours earlier inside a holding cell in the Atlantic County Justice Facility’s admissions, said Alan Wright, who was released from the jail late Tuesday night.
The whole thing was captured on cameras, Wright said.
No one from the county or jail is commenting while the investigation is ongoing.
An officer who saw the video called it “sickening,” Wright said.
A post on Wright’s Facebook page alerted people to the death, and the allegations against officers and nursing staff at the jail.
He has since talked to investigators with the Attorney General’s Shooting Response Team, which is investigating the death.
“Alan, please can you get me water?” Wright said Terruso asked when he saw him in holding.
Wright, who had been in the facility for about two months, was a main runner in the jail, meaning he has access to different units.
He was in the admissions area using the bathroom when he saw Terruso, who he has known for about 15 years.
Terruso was in a “dry cell,” meaning he was suspected of having drugs hidden somewhere on his body, even after a search. The cell doesn’t have a bathroom and no access to water, he explained.
“I’m trying to throw up. I’m trying to get it up,” Terruso told Wright, who said he believes that means his friend may have swallowed something to hide it from officers.
Wright asked if he could give Terruso some Gatorade in a cup, but was told no.
“He’s faking,” he was told.
Every 30 seconds or so, Terruso would hack like he was trying to throw up, Wright said.
A nurse assigned there just laughed and asked if he was like that on the street.
“He’s normal on the street,” Wright told her. “I think he’s overdosing.”
But instead of getting Terruso help, Wright was told to leave, he said.
Through a window he saw Terruso’s convulsions getting closer, and then saw him throw up what appeared to be dark blood.
“How could he fake throwing up blood?” Wright asked.
Then came the announcement of an inmate-officer confrontation, and about 10 corrections officers went running in, he said.
The rest, Wright just learned from other officers inside.
“One officer I know was bragging, ‘Damn, he must have been high because he was absorbing punches to the face like he was Superman,’” Wright said.
Terruso was not complying with officers, so they “wrapped him up,” Wright explained, saying that’s when officers use rope to tie together an inmate’s hands and feet and then tie them both together.
They put boxing headgear on them too.
“You can’t take a full breath in that position,” Wright said.
Wright, an MMA fighter, said he has trained many of the corrections officers in how not to have to punch someone to get compliance.
As this was going on, inmates were told they couldn’t move, and Wright had to wait to be escorted back to the work pod, where he is housed.
While he waited, he said he saw his friend being loaded into the ambulance, and medical technicians were working on him.
Wright said he got one of the officers to show him Terruso’s charge, which was a child support warrant.
Around 3 a.m., an officer woke him up to tell him Terruso had died.
Wright said he wrote down what he saw and then called his wife, telling her to post it on his Facebook.
After the post went public, he said he was strip searched and taken down, where he was told he was going to be charged with “cyberbullying or something,” Wright said.
“You’re not going home,” he said he was told. “You should have waited until you left to post about us.”
Wright said he was told that he was going to be moved out of the work pod, and wouldn’t be going anywhere “for a long time.”
He then found himself in the same cell Terruso had been in. His friend’s blood was still on the wall.
But even not knowing what would happen next, Wright said he wasn’t sorry he had the story posted.
“I wanted it out there no matter what,” he said.
After a while, Wright was taken back to his unit and then State Police came and interviewed him.
On Wednesday, two investigators came to his home and confirmed with his wife how the Facebook post came about.
Wright said he still had the pink paper he had written the post on. His wife also had written down what her husband dictated on the phone on the back of a sushi takeout container.
“If it was me, I would want everybody to know,” Wright said. “I wanted it out so his death wouldn’t be for nothing. Maybe next time they’ll treat other inmates in the future the proper way. You become almost subhuman when you come in there. They treated him like he was an animal.”
