This is wrong under any circumstances. However, notice the language the Mexican Gov chooses to respond with even though it appears to have been an accident.


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A bailiff is under an internal investigation after a woman spent four days forgotten in a holding cell without food, water or a toilet.

Bailiff Jarrod Hankins put Adriana Torres-Flores in the cell to await transport to jail Thursday and didn't let her out until Monday morning. No one on the fourth floor of the courthouse had heard her cries or her banging on the 2-inch-thick steel door of the 9 1/2-by-10 1/2-foot cell.

"There's nothing at all that indicates this was done intentionally," said Washington County Chief Deputy Jay Cantrell. "This was a very, very horrible accident."

Torres-Flores, 38, arrested on charges of selling pirated CDs, had been ordered held by a judge because the Mexican immigrant is in the country illegally. On Monday she was taken to a hospital, where she was treated and released and allowed to go home, though she still faces deportation.

Torres-Flores told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through an interpreter — her 14-year-old daughter — that she used a shoe as a pillow to sleep in the holding cell, which had two benches, a metal table and a light she could not turn off.

"She was feeling like she was going to die," said the daughter, Adriana Torres-Diaz.

"She had to use the bathroom on the floor," Torres-Diaz said. "She said she was so thirsty she had to drink her own urine."

The bailiff meant to call the county jail for deputies to pick her up, but got pulled away back into court and forgot Torres-Flores was waiting inside the cell, Cantrell said.

The next day, snow blanketed Arkansas and the courthouse saw few employees come in for work, though both Hankins and the judge he works for, Circuit Judge William Storey, were there. No one checked the cell, as Storey did not hear cases all day, Cantrell said.

"They were just a few feet away from the cell, but they never heard anything. Nothing got their attention," Cantrell said.

As of Tuesday, Hankins, of Elkins, remained on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, Cantrell said. He described the bailiff as horrified over what happened.

"He's extremely distraught over it," Cantrell said. "He's not distraught over his job or anything like that, he's distraught about this woman that he caused her to be left in there for four days."

A bailiff for about two months, Hankins started part-time work for the sheriff's department in 2005 and in 2006 began working as an adult detention officer.

Mexican consul Andres Chao said he visited Torres-Flores as she rested at home Tuesday. Chao said she still suffered from periodic headaches and stomach aches.

"At this moment, Adriana is alive," Chao said. "But after four days without water, without food, in a small room — it's unbelievable."

Chao met Tuesday with Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder and county Judge Jerry Hunton to offer "the highest protest of the Mexican government."

Torres-Flores will receive legal assistance from the consulate as her case moves on, Chao said. She pleaded not guilty in the criminal case against her and her trial is set for April 1.

Sheriff's office deputies guarding the courthouse now check the small room at the end of their shifts to make sure no one still sits inside, Cantrell said. Deputies also plan to install a video system for the cell, as well as a light alerting passers-by that the cell is occupied.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_ ... MK5RVvzwcF