‘The system took my brother’: family demands answers in LA jail death

The family of Jalani Lovett, a 27-year-old who died in a Los Angeles jail last year, is demanding that the county sheriff's department be held accountable and authorities release more information about the final moments of his life.

Lovett died in solitary confinement in Men's Central jail in downtown LA on 22 September. The county coroner released an autopsy report on Tuesday saying Lovett's death was "accidental" and that he had fentanyl and heroin in his system.

But Lovett's mother and siblings, who have been fighting for months to get basic information from authorities about what led to his death, are left with major questions about the case. If Lovett died from an overdose, how did he access fentanyl while in solitary confinement? What were the actions of guards on duty that night, in a jail with a history of mistreatment? And why did it take so long for the coroner to produce the autopsy report, which the county sent to a reporter this week before the family obtained it?

"I'm a grieving mother, but I'm also an angry mother," Terry Lovett, 65, told the Guardian this week in an interview from her home in Oakland. She said the sheriff's department, which runs the jail, had repeatedly ignored her family's pleas for answers: "They have no regard for human life."

"I want the truth to come out," she added. "To me, this was murder. They killed my son."

Christian Contreras, a local civil rights attorney, filed a claim against the county on behalf of the family on Wednesday, the first step in a lawsuit, alleging "negligence causing wrongful death", "deliberate indifference" in violation of the 14th amendment, an "inhumane killing" and more.

Jalani Lovett, one of six siblings, grew up in east Oakland. He excelled at basketball and baseball as a teenager and won a poetry medal in school, his mother said. He was an aspiring rapper and a family man who was close with his nieces and nephews.