The Sacramento County Coroner's Officer says they have a pretty good idea how 48-year-old Mark Anthony Scott died; they just don’t know why he died.
"I looked in Mr. Scott's cell. Mr. Scott was sitting on the bed and there was blood in the toilet and around the collar of his shirt," said Seamus Strother in January 2012.
Strother was on the same cell block as Scott in the Sacramento County Jail, and he wrote us right after Scott's death to say Scott didn't get needed medical attention while in his cell.
Autopsy results are back now. Mark Scott reportedly died in lock-up from something called Mallory-Weiss Syndrome. That is rips in the wall of the esophagus where it meets the stomach.
But why that day, in that cell, in the Sacramento County Jail?
The coroner's report says they just don't know.
After the incident, jail staff said they were not told that Scott was vomiting blood any time prior to his death or in the immediate aftermath.
But Strother said both Scott and his cell mate used their cell’s intercom system repeatedly to call for help.
"They came in, they just basically told us he passed-away, they didn't know why," said a member of Mark Scott’s immediate family who did not want to be identified.
Months have gone by and she says still Scott’s family doesn't know why he died.
Mallory-Weis Syndrome, if treated, is rarely ever fatal.
"He begged these people, Ben. He was at their mercy."
The Scott family is filing an internal affairs complaint, calling for an investigation into his death. They believe he was left to bleed by an uncaring jail staff.
Their attorney is Stewart Katz.
"The coroner’s report never mentions the blood all over the walls, the blood on the floors, the paper bags he’d been vomiting blood into,” Katz said.
A horrible setting for anyone’s final moments. But the question remains, did jail staff know?
A spokesman for the Sacramento County sheriff’s department told us, in anticipation of the internal affairs complaint and a lawsuit, they are no longing answering question about the death of Mark Anthony Scott.
