Inmate with dairy allergy dies after eating oatmeal
EVERETT, Wash. -- Rose Saffioti was sure she was doing the right thing when she encouraged her son to turn himself over to police.
An arrest warrant for Michael Saffioti had been issued after he missed a court date. But after one night in jail, he was dead.
Now Snohomish County could face a lawsuit over a food allergy that may have been ignored.
Michael Saffioti knew dairy could kill him. He grew up reading labels and carrying medication, and still suffered severe reactions whenever he was merely near dairy protein. The stress made him anxious to the point of needing medication.
"Ultimately, he found and thought he was better functioning using marijuana," said his mother.
Michael did not have a medical marijuana prescription, and his use put him in and out of the legal system. In the most recent incident, he and his mother went to police, armed with his medical history after he had missed a court date.
"I wanted Michael held accountable for his legal issues and I insisted on it. But I didn't want him to die," said Rose.
After eating oatmeal in jail, Michael couldn't breathe. Other inmates say Michael begged for help and was accused of faking it. The autopsy found his severe reaction to milk products contributed to his death.
"You can't get help. You can't call 911. You're at their complete mercy," said Anne Bremner, an attorney representing the Saffioti family. "When the jail's the one that gives you something that's going to kill you -- that they know is going to kill you -- they, at a minimum, have to rescue you. And they didn't."
The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said it would not comment on what happened or on the potential lawsuit until its investigation is complete.
In the meantime, Michael's mother is wearing his ring as a symbol of her quest for answers.
"This reminds me every day what I have to do for Michael," she said. "I know there's a period where he knew he was going to die. And he trusted me. Everything was supposed to be set up, that he'd be taken care of."
Rose said she will sue the county, but her first goal is to hold someone criminally responsible.
She and her attorney will encourage the prosecutor's office to file involuntary manslaughter charges against jail workers whom they believe should have prevented Michael's death.
An arrest warrant for Michael Saffioti had been issued after he missed a court date. But after one night in jail, he was dead.
Now Snohomish County could face a lawsuit over a food allergy that may have been ignored.
Michael Saffioti knew dairy could kill him. He grew up reading labels and carrying medication, and still suffered severe reactions whenever he was merely near dairy protein. The stress made him anxious to the point of needing medication.
"Ultimately, he found and thought he was better functioning using marijuana," said his mother.
Michael did not have a medical marijuana prescription, and his use put him in and out of the legal system. In the most recent incident, he and his mother went to police, armed with his medical history after he had missed a court date.
"I wanted Michael held accountable for his legal issues and I insisted on it. But I didn't want him to die," said Rose.
After eating oatmeal in jail, Michael couldn't breathe. Other inmates say Michael begged for help and was accused of faking it. The autopsy found his severe reaction to milk products contributed to his death.
"You can't get help. You can't call 911. You're at their complete mercy," said Anne Bremner, an attorney representing the Saffioti family. "When the jail's the one that gives you something that's going to kill you -- that they know is going to kill you -- they, at a minimum, have to rescue you. And they didn't."
The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said it would not comment on what happened or on the potential lawsuit until its investigation is complete.
In the meantime, Michael's mother is wearing his ring as a symbol of her quest for answers.
"This reminds me every day what I have to do for Michael," she said. "I know there's a period where he knew he was going to die. And he trusted me. Everything was supposed to be set up, that he'd be taken care of."
Rose said she will sue the county, but her first goal is to hold someone criminally responsible.
She and her attorney will encourage the prosecutor's office to file involuntary manslaughter charges against jail workers whom they believe should have prevented Michael's death.
Perhaps there are some people who deserve to be incarcerated for their crimes against others, but lets face it, the State has criminalized a lot of activity that does not harm others or violate their property rights. In this fashion, the State is the aggressor. Since every human has the natural right to defend themselves, or others, against aggression, logic dictates that people have the right to use violence to incapacitate or disable the capability of the State to perform aggression.   This is the moral basis for revolution. When enough people (many of them either themselves victims, or friends and family of victims), realize that revolution is moral, they will rise up against the State and either severely damage or destroy it. Already there is a large network of patriotic and moral-minded citizens who are engaged in advanced design and planning of how to best accomplish these missions to defend against the State's assault on natural human rights. Â
It's not just Snohomish county, officers @BentonCountyJail are just as bad. You people in Washington who praise these guys every time they kill someone should know that the unions that represent the police, correctional officers and judicial workers spend money than any other pacs and they are doing all they can to expand their authority with the hopes that very single one of you will be run through their system one day. Your freedom is adverse to their job security... and they are winning.
A Jail is a correctional facility, not a medical facility. Whom was to know what allergies each prison has. Hey, did he ever hear of a medical bracelet to wear????
My best friend, in jail for a misdemeanor, saw and heard them kill Michael. People who think people in jail deserve what they get, do you think that Michael deserved to be murdered for possessing marijuana for his medical and psychological issues? Do you think the 18 year old young man or woman who stole a 75 cent candy bar deserve to be raped or tortured in jail for it?
Â
Wake up people, this is America and human rights are not just for some humans, they are for all humans! Snohomish county jail is just the tip of this. Every single day in America, people in jail for misdemeanors are tortured, threatened, raped, beaten and yes murdered and who do you think they believe about what happened, the inmates who witnessed it or the jailers who protect each other with their own codes, no matter what? What if this was your son or daughter?
Â
Do you understand that they forced this young man with his whole life ahead of him to eat something he was allergic to with threats of solitary confinement if he didn't? Do you understand he BEGGED for help and they let him die?
Â
As far as I am concerned, Snohomish county should lose every penny to human rights organizations and be shut down until they allow outside oversight by people who actually care, rather than oversight by their own or people who think, oh well, they are a criminal, they deserve whatever they get.
Â
If you have any compassion in you, please, please, help in Michael's name and the other five who have died in the last two years. to end the abuse of inmates at Snohomish county jail. There is NO true medical help there. My friend, also there for a misdemeanor, was threatened with solitary (the hole), if he didn't take his meds. The problem, he doesn't take any meds, never saw any medical person and they were NOT his meds! Three times!
Â
Snohomish county jail is a death trap and we wonder how may people have to die there before anyone gives a damn?
Â
Think of this as well....this is happening all over America. Young men and women raped, tortured, beaten, murdered and coming out dead with stab wounds in there backs, while the jailers claim they committed suicide! They pay someone off to shut up about it and it just goes on and on.
Â
People with mental illness are not given any help, none. They are abused and threatened. They get out and we all expect them to not re-offend because they were punished. The problem is, nobody cares that perhaps if their mental illness were treated, they may very well not re-offend. But we can all figure out why nobody wants to help them. If they actually got the help they need, they may not re-offend and then their wouldn't be jobs for the jailers. Keeping the cycle going keeps them employed so do you think they, the judges or police, (most of them) actually want to get them help so they do not re-offend? It keeps them employed. Think about it.
Â
This is not going to end until people actually stand up and make it end in the name of human decency and compassion.Â
Â
Michael was murdered. He was forced to ingest food that he was allergic to. Someone has to stop this. we won't stop speaking about this until someone listens and changes it so that others don't have to die at the hands of people running correctional facilities who believe they are above the law!
Â
Â
 @Bleu Wallace I remember bringing my friend his prescriptions that he had been without for three days and badly needed, besides being rude and non cooperative, the Snohomish County Staff used all their energy running interference instead of trying to help, they saw to it he didn't get his medications throughout the weekend. It didn't matter his Doctor pleaded with them to give him his badly needed medications they could of inspected to see if it was legit, it came in solid pills with the color and # clearly marked on each tablet in the orig bottles. Luckily he didn't die but he was very sick by the time he was released
I think he could have survived one day in jail if he just skipped the oatmeal. He obviously didn't "live in fear" as much as the article insists.
pot dosent have to be smoked. its not like cigarettes in the manner of medicine, and jail time for it is way out of line in his case. and those who smoke really should not.
This is so wrong, it makes my blood boil.
His mom wanted him to do the right thing but it would have been better if he'd gotten a lawyer than just turning himself in.
His mom told him "everything will be alright" but once you are 18 you cannot go around in life having your mom tell you "everything will be alright." Â Moms do not have power like the police, politicians, judges, courts and jails do.
Â
He did not deserve to die but why create hoards of these males who live with their moms who never become men?
Smoking anything will clog up your throat and lungs. The lessons learned here is do not smoke dope and do not think the police are your friends like those flaky teachers taught  you in a school. Cops and prison workers are public union workers who do not care about anything except pay increases. They are sadists and control freaks just like you were told  Sadaam's Baath Party police were sadists and control freaks.
 @david davey Really! You and Maggie are retarded. The point is that the jailers responsible for inmate safety did not do their jobs and even mocked a guy while he was clearly choking to death not that he smoked pot or that police are sadists. He died because an allergic reaction that caused his throat to swell up thus cutting off his oxygen not from smoking pot for years. All it would have taken to save this kids life is a pen prick with an epi pen which should have been kept in the first aid kit. If you don't know what that is look it up on google or bing since I feel I have wasted enough time on you two idiot savants.Â
 @david davey really ,u r right, lungs cant handle the crap ...... money spent and money earned! what a shame... kids wont know tell they r addicted and cant breath.. in about 30 years of smoking any thing. and running and working hard is certainly out of the question and they dont even know it is from smoking, they truly dont know why they feel like crap....
Can't say anything that comes out of Snohomish County would surprise me, even 44 years later. I was an 18 year old inmate there in 1968. It was a modern dungeon, it was medieval. The toilet froze in the winter, the showers didn't work, they would run out of food when they reached our end of the jail. My joints swelled up, others had open sores. I can't emphasize enough just how extreme it was at times. I saw a guy sexually assaulted, and when he lost it, when he was at the bottom, screaming, the jailers dragged him out of the tank and BEAT him all the way to the hole where they tossed him into the dark alone. I'll never forget that, or the faces of the animals who worked there. Plenty of good material for a horror story. As far as the food shortages went, it turned out that sheriff dept employees were stealing from the inmate fund. Now if you think that it's ok to subject other human beings to the treatment that comes with our jails and prisons because a fellow human being violates some petty, nonsense, arbitrary rule of society, I think you belong in some place like Mexico, China, etc... That's where they live like you want to live. The fact that this man died because the staff refused to help him is no surprise to me and probably isn't any surprise to anyone who has spent a day there. This is the kind of stuff that turns out people with a whole lot of hate and anger to vent on others. Putting a human being in a cage is punishment enough, there really isn't any need for the rest of it.
The "people" working in the jails and most prisons are the Lowest life on this Earth. Ignorant, brutal, thieving, no morals or honesty.
 @Elmer V Kallio Koski Absolute power corrupts.
 @Elmer V Kallio Koski
Â
Elmer's nailed it on the head. Just google Gregory Hemingway Ernest's son who was denied his medication in a Flori-duh jail which caused his death. Any time a person is in jail or even a hospital they take their own lives in the hand not knowing what the prison authorities or the hospital staff will do to them including depriving them of their meds.Â
 @Elmer V Kallio KoskiÂ
Â
Everything we were told about Sadaam's police is what we have here. These are some sick people who want constant praise and money. I do not think you'd have to be in prison to know what they are like as I am sure they are nasty when they are in checkout lines, bars or anywhere else.
HE NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! Marijuana is only Illegal so the drug companies can make millions shoving painkillers and anti anxiety medications at you. Please wake up people. He did nothing wrong and they killed him.Â
 @Wendylouwho32
Â
All you can think about is dope when someone died after a petty offense. You will be arrested anywhere if you do not show up for a court date . His dope smoking made him not care that he had a court date and is proof pot makes people weird. Â Legalizing dope will not change these sick people working at prisons or committing sex crimes in prisons.
 @david davey  @Wendylouwho32 I was just pointing out that his "offense"  cost him his life. There are plenty of people out there who deserve to be in jail. He was not one of them.Â
Guards are NOT qualified to diagnose! Â If they were made aware of his severe allergies, they should have believed him. Â With anaphylaxis shock, you don't have time to wait for medical help!This man was denied his basic rights. Â I hope the entire penal system sits up and takes notice!Â
When HUMAN FILTH gets a badge EVERYONE PAYS!!!
Â
It seems the system failed this boy when everything was done right ti ensure his safety and well being while in the county jail. I hope everyone resposible pays for this mistake and it is not covered up.
This is so sad, I have never been to jail but I do have a couple of friends that work for this one and the story's they tell me how they call people stupid or some other name  to there face while being locked up, I can believe that he tried to seek help to only get told told that he is faking it. This is the second death there within the last 10 months. I have no idea what happen to the first death but I really hope the jail is look into now.
I really wish there was a way to ensure that everyone responsible for this guys death was required to spend at least 1 night in a cell with a very large, strong "booty bandit".
I really hope there is a massive lawsuit and some CO's get fired for this.
 @Xing0L  They need to be charged with the crimes they committed.Â
Maybe he committed suicide by taking the oatmeal with milk as he did know that he was allergic to dairy. Now the taxpayers get to pay thousands in court and settlement on a law suit that will happen. everyone is always the victim and never responsible for themselves.
 @32jim2 What a douchey thing to say.
 @32jim2 Don't be so silly!  How was he supposed to know there was dairy in the oatmeal?  Why would he commit suicide and then beg for his medicine?This is like denying a diabetic the insulin (only much faster).  Would you accuse a diabetic of such a thing?Â
@32jim2 That made absolutely no sense. That is about as farfetched as anything I have ever heard on these forums. Wait for more details to emerge before making wild assumptions.
@32jim2 If he wanted to commit suicide, why would he seek help? There's nothing that even remotely suggests suicide.
This story absolutely infuriates me. This guy is dead and NO ONE did ANYTHING to try to save him in his time of need?!?! Damn right someone needs to be held criminal accountable. Un-freaking-believable.
Â
If that was my kid, I'd be doing the same thing. Make sure someone is criminally charged for his death and then sue for every freaking penny I could get. Then I'd donate to marijuana legalization.
 @Tattooed_Angel when i was a teenager i was arrested for shoplifting a book and forced to spend the night in the precinct because of shift change. i have severe asthma and began having an asthma attack in my cell. i called for help multiple times and was ignored. i told them my inhaler was in my backpack, which was hanging in my line of vision on a wall behind a desk. when i could no longer shout for help, the other woman in my cell began doing it. i started vomiting and wetting myself and wound up briefly unconscious in a puddle and nobody did anything. at some point, because my cell mate was screaming, an officer came over and said that the EMTs were on their way, and she told him again that my inhaler was in my bag. he finally brought it over and i sucked on it like my life depended on it (which it did.) by the time they got me to the hospital i had a blood pressure of 228/170 and was heading for a heart attack. the triage nurse asked the officer what i was in for, and when he told her it was for shoplifting a book, she demanded he take the cuffs off me and go away. it took hours of oxygen and a nebulizer and medications to get me breathing properly on my own & get my heart rate and BP down to reasonable levels.
Â
the moral of the story is that there are just simply some cops and correctional officers that do not have the slightest crap to give. all criminals are the same in their eyes, and they don't care whether it's someone's child who stole a book, or an adult who murdered someone. i almost died for a $5.00 book.
 @Tattooed_Angel AMEN. Sister.
this is horrible thing to happen. Yes the Jails just DO NOT CARE....
 @hello Time to FORCE them to start to care.
If you have to go to jail, please don't eat any of the food except apples and oranges (and eye them with caution) and drink nothing but water if you have any kind of alergy, to my knowledge they (jail staff) can't force you to eat, and if you refuse to eat anything except the fruit it might be a faster way to get to the infirmary where you might have a better chance to get the medical attention you need, it is better to lose a few pounds than to lose your life, this is a very tragic thing and someone needs to answer for it.
NIce Correctional Officers. Looks like someone will need a new job and the rest will need training.
Unfortunate. Â
Should have been an independent man, not listened to mom already, and kept up the weed.
There will be a multimillion $$ settlement - even so, unfortunate for the young man.
This is the tragic story that ended with the death of a young man! This did not have to happen. First off he was not some murder or rapist! He got in trouble for marijuana, not cocaine, heroine or meth! Then his mother had him do the right thing by turning himself in because of the missed court date; she even went as far as to supply them with his medical history. when this young man was begging for help those policeman should have seen to him right away, why think he is faking! Like I said not like he was a hardened criminal trying to find a way out of jail. This in my opinion makes them quite negligent!!! They should be put in prison because in my eyes they murdered this man!
Â
And yes he ate the oatmeal, but for the most part oatmeal is made with H2O (water) milk is usually added per your preference.
Â
Bottom line they should have NEVER ignored his pleas for help. So very sad, my prayers to his poor mom who insisted that he do the right thing! I bet she feels horrible now, you don't expect this to happen when you do the RIGHT things in life! Hope those policeman who are there to PROTECT and serve are fired and put in prison for a long long time, however I know this is just wishful thinking.
Â
The people who accused him of faking instead of providing or calling for medical help should be jailed for a long long time
 @Larry*X*K and forced to eat oatmeal?
 @T-Prop  No forced to pay for killing a man begging for help!!!
 @DarkParty  @T-Prop  @cajunurseÂ
Time to call Amnesty International!
Â
 @T-Prop  @cajunurse What does that have to do with anything? He needed medical attention and it was denied to him. He did not have a choice whether he was a toddler or an adult.
 @T-Prop Should of had a comma after no, thanks for picking up on that!
 @cajunurse  @T-Prop Re read what you wrote.  "No forced to pay..."  See what happens when you get emotional?
 @T-Prop they had a medical history on him, he begged them to help him, i don't know that if you are aware that when you have a sever allergy to something, it closes off your windpipe, literally smothering you to death. would you like someone to put a pillow over your face and hold it there until you can no longer breath?
Â
 @cajunurse He's no toddler.
 @T-Prop FOR ALLOWING A MAN TO DIE, THAT WAS BEGGING FOR THEM TO HELP HIM! DID I STUTTER?
 @cajunurse no....forced...to...pay...for...killing...what!?