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Some related articles : California struggling with growing numbers of elderly prisoners |
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Freed From Jail Despite His Pleas, 92-Year-Old Is Found Dead in a River
The Butte County Jail cell where Coval Russell spent his last happy days is no bigger than a wheelchair-size toilet stall, and it is cold and dark besides. No doubt in the two weeks since Mr. Russell was removed from the jail, forced back into a world he could no longer abide, his cell has again become a place where no one would want to spend a single night, let alone the rest of his days. Only Mr. Russell called this place home. At 92 years old, Mr. Russell, stoop-shouldered, blind in one eye and suffering from prostate cancer, had finally been rescued from a life of utter loneliness. For the year and two months — 426 days — that he spent at the Butte County Jail for stabbing his 70-year-old landlord, he was Pops. He was given dibs on the television, allowed to be first in the food line, reserved a place in Monopoly game marathons. He rarely had visitors. But he did not need any. Here, among the transient population of men awaiting sentencing or trial, he had found community. When his body was found Wednesday in the Feather River, where he had fallen from a bridge just a hop from the Motel 6 where he went after his release, no one who knew him doubted what had happened. Mr. Russell had petitioned the court to keep him in jail indefinitely and had become depressed when a judge last month granted him probation, sentencing him to freedom. He said he would kill himself if he was sent "back out there," with no family or friends. Apparently, he did. Witnesses say he took a taxi to the middle of the Table Mountain Bridge — he walked with great difficulty — and sat on the rail for about a half hour overlooking a mean pile of river rocks. Then he disappeared. "It's such a tragedy," Dan Young, the administrative sergeant for the Butte County Jail, said today during a tour of Mr. Russell's spots in the jail. "I don't know what his life was like. I don't know where he came from or what he had done for a living. But I do know that we're living in a society that sometimes forgets its seniors. This is a prime example." Before his big run-in with the law in April 2001, Mr. Russell, a World War II veteran, was leading a very quiet life in a small town about 20 miles from here called Paradise. Until he attacked his landlord, David William Boos, after Mr. Boos complained about his hygiene, Mr. Russell had never even had a traffic ticket. He was born in Oklahoma, and his mother died shortly after his birth. He was raised in Texas by grandparents. Jim Pihl, a private investigator for Mr. Russell's Chico-based lawyer, Grady Davis, said Mr. Russell had told him he had outlived all his relatives except, maybe, a brother he lost contact with in 1952. Mr. Russell went to Hollywood in 1930, after attending business college, and worked as a contractor and liquor store manager there before moving to Paradise to retire. Paradise, where it is 100 degrees in the summer and freezing in the winter, is not really a retirement paradise, but it suited Mr. Russell's interests. He went on weekly junkets to Reno, about 95 miles away, for 22 years straight, and liked to gamble at the Gold Country Casino on a local Indian reservation. On April 27, 2001, Mr. Russell was charged with attempted murder. He had stabbed Mr. Boos five times with a four-inch knife he was using to cut his toenails. Sgt. Chris Buzzard of the Paradise Police Department said Mr. Russell then barricaded himself in the men's small house and threatened to kill himself. After Mr. Russell was charged, Mr. Pihl visited him in jail. "He was scared to death when he went in," he said. Mr. Russell started carrying "three sharpened pencils" for protection, but they soon became unnecessary, as he had earned the respect of other inmates. "If anyone tried to attack Russ, the whole place would have jumped on him," Mr. Pihl said. "During that time in jail everyone befriended him and he actually was being treated better there than on the outside." Mr. Russell spent most of the time in the 570-bed jail's F Pod, 16 two-man cells reserved for inmates with psychological or medical needs, and even the guards gave him special attention. While his lawyer filed for repeated continuances just so Mr. Russell could remain in jail, officers never handcuffed him en route to court. They addressed him by his first name, and saw to it that he received his daily doses of four different medications. "With inmates with problems or needs, one of two things happen," Sergeant Young said. "Either they're adopted by a cell pod or they're preyed upon. Russell did very well here. He was a strong-minded old man. He was good at at least making noises like he could fend for himself, and the others respected that." Mr. Russell's time ran out last month when a Superior Court Judge ordered him released, saying that jail was not the place for a man of his age and his ill health. But he had nowhere to go. He was no longer welcome among the few friends he had in Paradise. Mr. Pihl tried unsuccessfully to get him into an assisted-living facility. Mr. Russell refused to consider a retirement community. He fiercely clung to his independence and worried that an old-age home would force him to sacrifice it. He ended up at the Motel 6, where with great difficulty he walked to a nearby diner for his meals. He told The Los Angeles Times last week that his remaining options were to violate probation so he could return to jail or perhaps take his own life. Mr. Pihl said he did not know about funeral arrangements, but hoped Mr. Russell was "in a better place." FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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