Even though the charges against him have been dropped, Rashaad Muhammad’s life has been permanently altered after spending 11 days incarcerated in Fulton County’s Rice Street Jail.
Muhammad had his lower legs amputated and a full or partial amputation on all 10 fingers due to what he and his lawyers described as medical neglect while he was locked up.
According to Muhammad, 34, he told the arresting officers he had a bladder infection and needed to take the medication in his car with him to jail but he wasn’t allowed to retrieve it. His car was later towed.
“When I arrived at Fulton County Jail, I told the people at the intake, I told the C.O.’s [corrections officers], I told everybody, I need my medicine because it’s that serious. If I don’t have this antibiotic, I can get really sick in here and go septic,” Muhammad told the Fulton County Board of Commissioners earlier this month.
Two weeks later, Muhammad was taken to Grady Hospital to be treated for septic shock. Doctors had to perform the amputations in order to save his life. A spokesperson for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told Capital B Atlanta in a statement that the agency is conducting a preliminary review to determine whether it will open a formal criminal investigation.
He is now being represented by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who indicated that his firm is preparing to bring a lawsuit against Fulton County at the May 6 Board of Commissioners meeting.
Crump also made three demands; an independent investigation, transparency in who decided to retain NaphCare — a correctional healthcare services company — as the jail’s medical care provider, and accountability for those involved. NaphCare is a private, family-owned company based in Birmingham, Alabama, that has contracts with more than 500 correctional facilities across 49 states.
“He told them that it was a matter of his life or death,” Crump said at the May 6 commissioners meeting. “He was begging for his medicine for 11 days.”
In a statement to Capital B Atlanta, a NaphCare spokesperson highlighted that the company maintains accreditation through the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. The spokesperson also said NaphCare remains committed to providing quality healthcare to the Fulton County Jail.
“We are saddened by what Mr. Muhammad experienced. We have conducted a clinical review of the care provided and stand behind the treatment delivered by our team. This involved a medically complex patient, and we believe our staff acted appropriately and did everything within their power and provided quality care and support under difficult circumstances,” the statement said.
The spokesperson added that NaphCare would respond to allegations made in any future lawsuit through the legal process.
A history of neglect
While Muhammad has become the most recent face of the treatment and conditions endured by people incarcerated in Fulton County, he is hardly the first person to allege medical neglect by the staff at the troubled facility.
In April, the commissioners voted to spend $1.3 billion on renovations to the Rice Street jail and a new special purpose facility for people with medical issues, incarcerated women, and other special populations. Although the current facilities are dilapidated, a new facility still does not address what Muhammad and Crump described as neglect on the part of jail staff and NaphCare employees.
“Who made the decision to keep the medical provider? Was it the sheriff or was it the county commission after Lashawn Thompson,” Crump asked commissioners.
In 2023, Crump represented Thompson’s family in a wrongful-death lawsuit after the 35-year-old died in his jail cell; later that year, the county settled the case for $4 million. Thompson, who had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, was arrested in June 2022 and housed in the jail’s medical wing for three months before his death.
The situation brought scrutiny to both Fulton County and NaphCare when the family revealed Thompson was found unresponsive in his cell at Rice Street, his body severely infested with bedbugs and lice.
According to the results of an independent autopsy released by Thompson’s family, the last time he’d received his schizophrenia medication was 32 days before he died. Months later, after the case made headlines, Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat asked for and accepted the resignations of the chief jailer, assistant chief jailer, and the assistant chief jailer of the criminal investigative division.
Then, in July, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division began its investigation into conditions in the jail.
This is not the first time NaphCare has been in the spotlight for providing poor medical care to an incarcerated person. In April 2021, Deion Strayhon, 26, died in his Gwinnett County jail cell. According to a lawsuit filed by his family, Strayhon had complained to medical staff of constipation and severe stomach pain for nearly a month and was given only antacids and a stool softener.
His autopsy revealed that he’d died of gastrointestinal bleeding from an ulcer in his small intestine. After Strayhon’s death, Gwinnett County dropped NaphCare as the jail’s medical provider.
By that time it was already too late for 22-year-old Jordan Davidson, who had been arrested in January 2021 and spent weeks asking the jail’s medical staff for help because he was losing motor skills. When he was finally taken to the hospital in June, doctors found a tumor in his spinal cord. Six months later he died due to complications after becoming paralyzed in all four limbs, according to a lawsuit filed by his mother.
Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Letitia James found NaphCare was illegally operating at a Syracuse prison despite not holding a license to provide medical services in the state.
Despite NaphCare’s checkered history locally and in jails across the country, in December the county commissioners unanimously voted to renew the contract with NaphCare through 2027. Capital B Atlanta reached out to the members of the Board of Commissioners for comment on their December vote.
Following the vote, the county’s purchasing director noted that the current contract hadn’t been updated since at least 2004 and informed the commissioners that her team would begin working on a new one for the next bid cycle.
Two years ago, Onika Davis filed a federal lawsuit against NaphCare and Fulton County because in 2022 her 28-year-old daughter Melayshia Osborne died of epileptic seizures after a week in Fulton County Jail. Last month, the case entered into discovery until October, meaning both parties will begin sharing all the information they plan to present at trial.
The Justice Department steps in
After a 16-month investigation, the Justice Department released a 97-page report on their findings. In it, the department notes that “jail officials exhibit deliberate indifference” as it relates to the mental and physical health of the incarcerated population.
Early in 2025 Fulton County and the sheriff’s office entered into a consent decree with the DOJ in order to avoid a federal takeover of the jail. Muhammad’s case suggests incarcerated people remain at risk in the facility, however. Under the agreement, the county must address the conditions people are being held in, which the DOJ says violates the Eighth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
In her latest report released in February, Kathleen Kenney, the court-appointed consent decree monitor, said only about half to two-thirds of daily tasks related to the medical and mental healthcare of incarcerated people were being completed.
Muhammad said he’d signed a form to get his antibiotics from the jail’s pharmacy, but when days went by without receiving it, he began to call his family to ask them to advocate from the outside. At the time, because of the bladder infection, he had to urinate using a catheter.
“Days keep going by, I’m getting sicker,” Muhammad recalled at the May 6 commissioners meeting. “It’s getting worse. It’s starting to smell, now everybody’s noticing. I’m telling the C.O.’s, I’m telling the nurses, I’m telling the pill call lady.”
He said he was shocked when the woman in charge of distributing medicine told him she didn’t have any medication for him because he felt like he had to be the sickest person in the whole jail at that point.
“It just gets worse and worse and worse to the point where I can’t get up off the floor and the inmates have to advocate for me,” he said. “Finally I get a stretcher call and they send me to Grady and that’s where they told me I needed a procedure.”
According to a GoFundMe started by Muhammad’s sister, insurance will not cover the prosthetic fingers he needs to regain the use of his hands that cost $15,000 each. She said donated funds will also help him pay for the physical therapy and prosthetic legs he also needs.
Read More:
- What Killed Lashawn Thompson?
- ACLU Report Calls Out Fulton County Jail for Overcrowding and Humanitarian Crisis
- ‘The System Is Failing My Son’: Mother of Bipolar Man Fears for Son’s Life Inside Fulton County Jail
This story has been updated.
