An Atlanta family is seeking answers after a brutal attack inside the Fulton County Jail left a 20-year-old woman on life support at Grady Hospital.
Tyriana Ledbetter had been incarcerated in Fulton County since late May on multiple charges including armed robbery and aggravated assault. According to a statement from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, she was attacked in her cell by Shania White, another incarcerated woman. Corrections officers found Ledbetter unconscious under the bed in her cell on Sept. 23. Because of the severity of her injuries, she was immediately transported to Grady.
While an investigation into the incident remains ongoing, the sheriff’s office announced they have charged White with aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and felony tampering with evidence.
Last week, Ledbetter’s mother, Gloria Buckner, stood outside the Fulton County Courthouse to decry the conditions and treatment her daughter received while in county custody.
“It’s just unfit, crowded,” she said. “And you [put] a 27-year-old with a 20-year-old that’s reading on a sixth grade level, and [she] beat my baby, like she was nothing.”
Buckner and Ledbetter’s sister Tyshun Barney also criticized Sheriff Patrick Labat and his office’s handling of the situation, as well as its communication with the family, saying they weren’t able to visit her in the hospital until a week after the attack occurred.
In a statement to Capital B Atlanta, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said the department was not able to get in touch with the family on Sept. 23 because when Ledbetter was initially arrested, she did not provide an emergency contact. The statement said a chaplain was able to contact Buckner two days later, but the family’s first visit wasn’t until the following week.
Violence against incarcerated people, by both corrections officers and other incarcerated people, is one of the most prevailing complaints against Fulton County Jail.
In the U.S. Department of Justice’s 97-page report last November on its investigation into conditions at the jail, lack of protection from harm is the first civil right violation identified.
“Leadership at the County and Sheriff’s Office are aware of the violence in the Jail and have publicly decried it. Yet they have failed to take adequate action to address the crisis, and homicides, stabbings, and other violent acts continue at dangerous levels,” the report stated.
Earlier this year, Fulton County and the sheriff’s office entered into a consent decree with the DOJ to prevent a lawsuit, and the court appointed a monitor to ensure the jail was making the agreed upon improvements.
The monitor filed her first report with the court in August and identified four priorities the sheriff and the county needed to focus on for the next six months. Two of the goals, classification and housing and staffing and supervision, are designed to mitigate the risk of harm to incarcerated people.
In an interview with Capital B Atlanta last month, Sheriff Labat pointed the finger at the county commissioners who hold his office’s purse strings and said he and his team are doing what they can with the resources they are given.
Labat has since met with the family at Grady Hospital. Barney, however, later told media that she felt like his apology was insincere.
Ledbetter’s family has also launched a GoFundMe to help pay for her short- and long-term medical bills as she begins the road to recovery.
“The conditions at Fulton County Jail have long been under scrutiny — for overcrowding, violence, and neglect — and Tyriana has now become another tragic example of what happens when vulnerable people are left unprotected,” Tijuana Bucker, the organizer, wrote on the GoFundMe page.
