FLORIDA CITY, FLORIDA — Three years after Darren Rainey's death in a Florida prison, the Miami-Dade medical examiner concluded this week that Rainey died from complications of schizophrenia, heart disease and "confinement" in a shower stall.
Rainey, a 50-year-old inmate at Florida's Dade Correctional Institution, was thrown into a specialized shower in June of 2012 after defecating in his cell. According to an inmate interviewed by the Miami Herald, the small shower was controlled from a room adjacent to the shower.
Corrections officers left Rainey in the shower for two hours as the stall filled with steam and hot water collected at his feet. Prison staff later found Rainey's lifeless body on the floor of the stall. The Miami Herald reports that as staff attempted CPR, a nurse measured his internal body temperature at 102 degrees Fahrenheit — way above the normal temperature.
"It takes about a minute for the shower to get full hot, so once it's on full hot he started yelling 'Get me out of here, get me out of here' and kept kicking the door and kicking the door. He continued to yell 'It's hot, get me out of here' and was kicking and kicking and kicking," inmate Harold Hempstead told Miami CBS affiliate WQAM. Hempstead said he heard Rainey's screams from his cell, which was under the shower.
Due to his body's prolonged exposure to water and heat, body fluid collected under Rainey's skin and caused the skin to slip off when prison staff touched his lifeless body.
Rainey was taking a strong antipsychotic medicine at the time called Haldol, with side effects that include increased body temperature and heart rate. It's not clear if his medication played a role in his death.
Investigators are not able to conclude that the shower was "excessively" hot on the day Rainey died. The autopsy report states that the officers had no intention of harming him.
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