A Georgia woman, suffering from a mental health crisis, died while in the custody of authorities after being detained for drunkenness. Now, the parents are requesting full transparency into her death — as experts say the story of her demise doesn’t make sense if officers were following standard protocol.
On Friday, July 15, Brianna Grier was taken into custody by the officials from Hancock County Sheriff’s Office for intoxication, but later died after suffering two skull fractures related to falling out of a moving patrol cruiser after being detained, the Washington Post reports.
The mother of twins was visiting her parents, who care for the 3-year-old children, the day before the arrest. She allegedly left the home well and returned after midnight in a full-blown crisis.
Marvin Grier, her father, said he didn’t know what triggered her when she left the home but did not dismiss drug use, stating she had once told him she used illegal drugs to help her in a way her prescriptions did not. Still, the family was not clear if her episode was brought on because she was high or had been drinking.
Experts state that schizophrenia-related psychosis can be connected to alcohol consumption, adding “alcohol also affects the brain’s reward systems and research links changes to this area of the brain with schizophrenia.”
Her parents called 911, not because their 28-year-old was drunk, but because she was having a mental break related to her schizophrenia. Grier said he and his wife contacted the emergency line expecting a dispatcher to send paramedics who could provide her with the assistance she needed.
However, deputies arrived and upon smelling alcohol on her person, and Grier admitting she was drinking, decided they would take her in. They handcuffed her, while she was still in crisis, and placed her in the patrol car, her father states.
The parents said their daughter protested going with the deputies, but the parents encouraged her to stay calm.
As they handcuff the woman, her father said she called out, “No, no, no, no. I haven’t done anything for y’all to arrest me. I’m not going to jail.”
“We said, ‘Brianna, let them help you,’” Grier recalled.
The parents iterated they had planned to take her to get medical treatment the next morning.
But that never happened. On the way to a holding room, while riding in the patrol vehicle, she accidentally “fell out” and later died from those injuries.
According to the father, officers returned later in the morning police told the woman’s mother that she “kicked the back door in and jumped out” of the patrol cruiser and had to be rushed to the hospital after sustaining a head injury.
The young woman’s skull had been cracked in two places — and days later doctors declared her brain dead.
“The doctors tell you there’s nothing else they can do — she’s brain dead,” Grier’s dad said as he sobbed. “Then she’s gone.”
A report by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) released on Thursday, July 21, noted that at 1 p.m. that day, she was pronounced dead at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
“The early investigation indicates Hancock County Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to a home on Hickory Grove Church Road in Sparta,” it read, detailing the facts of the incident. “Grier was arrested at the home. While deputies were taking Grier to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, Grier fell out of a patrol car and sustained significant injuries. She later died because of those injuries.”
GBI noted was taken to the GBI Crime Lab for an autopsy and that the sheriff, Terrell Primus, requested the GBI’s regional office investigate Milledgeville to investigate the circumstances around Grier’s death.
The father still has questions regarding his daughter’s demise, saying, “We need to know what happened to our daughter.”
“If we had known it was going to end up this way, we would have let her stay here,” he says.
Grier explained his daughter was diagnosed years ago with the mental illness and had been on medication to treat it.
The sheriff’s office released their account what happened that night, showing they did nothing out of order.
According 13WMAZ, the HCSO painted Grier in the report as a violent passenger, allegedly kicking the deputies when they put her in the patrol vehicle.
The report also said she dared them to tase her and vowed to kill herself before going to jail.
Primus’ officer collected 90 pages worth of records and testimony, about the incident and her character in defense of the deputies’ actions on July 15. Included in the package was years of the woman struggles with mental illness, drugs and battles with her parents and the state’s Division of Family & Child Services over the safety of her children.
It alleges when the deputies arrived at the Grier parents’ door, she was outside beating on it and demanding to be let in.
They confirm that they believed she was drinking and that her parents requested she be taken to the hospital.
The decision was made for her to go to jail, but she refused — instead curling on the ground in a fetal position. This is when the deputies placed her hands in front of her in handcuffs.
She continued to bark at the deputies “she was not going to jail and that she was going to kill herself when she gets to jail.”
At some points, the deputies physically picked her up and placed her into the cruiser. On the way, before getting into the cruiser, the report states, she started to kick them. This was the only time their mission to get her into the vehicle was impeded.
The account states one officer threatened to zap her with his stun gun if she did not comply.
In response, Grier stated, “tase me!”
She finally, though the WMAZ does not report how long it took, was placed alone in the back seat of the patrol car.
The driving deputy wrote, “as I turned to see what Brianna Grier was doing, I hear the passenger side rear door open.”
The deputies state they immediately stopped and went to look for her, finding her face down in the grass on the side of the road.
“I called her name and tapped her,” the driving deputy continued. “However, she was unresponsive.”
After checking her, they took her to the hospital.
WMAZ says the records did not explain how Grier’s door got open.
Questions around her “kicking the back door” and falling out of the car have stumped many, including police training expert Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. Was the door not locked? Who was responsible for the locks on the door? What is the department’s protocol on locking doors when people are in the back?
Alpert stated in a communication with NBC News, “ALWAYS supposed to be locked from the inside.”
He said this is done for no other reason than “prisoners would be letting themselves out all the time.”
Her dad also blasted the deputies saying, “Everybody knows that no one can just kick a door open on a police cruiser. I never heard nobody else say it had happened.”
Grier’s father continued, “and with her hands behind her back? Something’s not right here.”
In addition to asking for answers, Grier’s parents are trying to figure out how to tell the twins about their mother’s passing in a way their toddler minds can comprehend.
He said, “One day they’re going to ask, ‘Where Mama? We don’t see Mama no more.’ What can we tell them?”
“We’ll just tell them, ‘Mama was sick and the doctor couldn’t do no more for her,’” the father said he and his wife have resolved.
The GBI stated the investigation into her death remains active and ongoing.
