An Ohio sheriff’s department has finally opened up an investigation and suspended a deputy accused of assaulting and paralyzing a jail inmate more than a year ago.
Surveillance footage obtained by WOIO shows the moment Lorain County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Tellier slammed a handcuffed inmate headfirst into a wall on May 12, 2023.
That day, the inmate, 59-year-old Jeffrey Fry, was arrested for violating probation.
As Tellier walks a handcuffed Fry through the Lorain County Jail facility’s sally port, Tellier is seen grabbing Fry’s arm and slamming him against the wall. Footage shows that Tellier injured Fry unprovoked, leaving Fry limp and unresponsive after the assault.
Afterward, Tellier drags Fry’s slack body back into the jail and callously hurls his body onto a gurney, appearing indifferent as to whether he caused any potential injuries.
Fry wasn’t taken to the hospital until 30 minutes after the incident.
“He’s got a permanent spinal cord injury, he’s got a lesion on his spinal cord,” Fry’s attorney, Nick DiCello, said.
Tellier, whose father-in-law is the jail director, wrote up a use-of-force report, claiming that Fry was intoxicated, pulled away from him, and fell, so he hoisted him up against a wall to keep him standing.
Tellier’s sergeant approved the report, noting that “reasonable force was used.”
Days later, a lieutenant compared the report to surveillance video of the incident and found “multiple inaccuracies.” That lieutenant reported that Tellier “mistreated” Fry and “falsified” his use-of-force report.
Afterward, then-Sheriff Phil Stammati issued Tellier only a written reprimand for the maltreatment and ordered him not to have contact with any more inmates but allowed him to stay on the job.
The new sheriff, Jack Hall, who noted a long-standing culture of abuse at the jail and promised to clean house of any deputies who mistreated inmates, recently suspended Tellier with pay and launched a new investigation into the incident.
The suspension comes more than a year after Fry and his legal team filed a $40 million federal lawsuit against 18 defendants, including the sheriff’s office, the Elyria Police Department, and Lifecare Ambulance, Inc.
The complaint alleges that law enforcement officials lied and insufficiently responded to the “egregious assault” committed against a defenseless Fry, which left him with a “serious head, neck, and spinal cord injury.”
“My hands and arms were paralyzed. … They were just like Pinocchio with no strings. I couldn’t move nothing except my neck and my mouth,” Fry said.
Though Fry has since regained much of the use of his body, he says he’s still partially paralyzed and will likely suffer lingering effects for the rest of his life.
“Jeff’s baseline now is what he’s looking at for the rest of his life,” DiCello said. “No one’s called Jeff to apologize to him. No one’s called Jeff to say, hey we’re going to look into this, this isn’t going to happen again.”
The FBI launched an investigation into the use-of-force incident in 2023, which remains open. The lawsuit is also still ongoing.
