By Minyvonne
Burke
An Oklahoma inmate who alleged in a lawsuit that jail staff tortured detainees, forcing them into stress positions for hours while listening to
Baby Shark
-- a children's song that exploded in popularity in 2019 -- has been found. dead in his cell.
A detention officer checking the scene found John Basco unresponsive around 3:50 am Sunday, Oklahoma County Detention Center officials said in a news release.
Medical personnel were called and efforts were made to save his life, but Basco, 48,
was pronounced dead
shortly after 4:00 am.
The Oklahoma County Detention Center in Oklahoma City. Via NBC News
The cause of death was not released and detention center officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Basco was one of four inmates who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last year, alleging that jail officials used excessive force and disciplinary tactics that the lawsuit called
"acts of torture."
The defendants are Oklahoma County Sheriff Tommie Johnson III, the County Board of Commissioners, the jail trustee and two former jail officials.
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According to the lawsuit, Basco and detainee Daniel Hedrick were forced to stand in a stress position while listening to
Baby Shark
on separate occasions in late 2019.
Joseph Mitchell, another inmate, was taken from his cell in November 2019 and put in a room where he was forced into a "standing stress posture" for three to four hours while handcuffed behind his back, according to the lawsuit. .
Officers then played
Baby Shark
so loud that it "bombed down the halls
," also according to the lawsuit.
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According to court documents, inmate Ja'Lee Foreman Jr. was not forced to listen to the song, but was put in a stress position and was then kneed in the back and slammed against a wall by an officer and spat on. for another.
The detainees, who were in pretrial detention at the time, posed no threat to officers, according to the lawsuit.
Oklahoma County Prosecutor David Prater charged two former jail employees and their supervisor with misdemeanor cruelty in October 2020.
Prater was quoted in the lawsuit as saying that the practice of putting
Baby Shark
as a form of punishment was "cruel and inhumane" and that it caused "
undue emotional stress
on inmates who were very likely already suffering."
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PD Taylor, then sheriff, said the jail employees who were charged have resigned and his supervisor has retired.
The lawsuit is still pending.
A federal district judge in July stayed an additional federal lawsuit by the detainees until the criminal case against the jail employees is concluded, with the next hearing scheduled for September 22, the local newspaper The Oklahoman reported.
Basco's attorney, Cameron Spradling, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
In a message on Twitter, Spradling called
the death of his client "mysterious"
and noted that Basco was the 14th inmate to die in jail this year.
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"I am sorry for the loss of my client John Basco, a victim of
Baby Shark
torture , who died today in the custody of the Oklahoma County Jail. The worst jail in the world!" he tweeted.
Basco died less than a month after another detainee killed himself on Aug. 19, according to jail officials.
Three inmates died in jail in July, according to press releases from the same institution.