A promising basketball player who was arrested after allegedly robbing a pizzeria has started ‘eating the jail’, swallowing screws, needles and even pieces of metal.
Lamont Cathey, 17, was detained in Cook County Jail in Chicago after he was arrested 16 months ago for an alleged robbery.
Since no-one has paid his $5,000 bail, Cathey has remained in the jail, and has recently taken to ‘eating it’, swallowing objects including screws, needles, thumbtacks, strips of leather and on one occasion parts of a medical device.
The damage he has done to his insides is so severe that he has been to hospital two dozen times, costing the jail more than $1million (£647,000).
‘He’s literally eating the jail,’ the jail’s executive director, Cara Smith, told the Chicago Tribune.
‘This case to me is a perfect example of the failure of the criminal justice system… It’s been a crushingly sad and very frustrating case.’
In many cases, inmates find themselves in the west Chicago facility for relatively minor charges, but end up staying for years because they do not have the money to post bond.
During this time, some inmates – especially the younger ones like Cathey – find themselves under the influence of older detainees and end up facing new charges for troublesome or violent behaviour.
Cathey’s family say the jail is to blame for the teenager’s new eating habit.
His lawyers say he needs long-term psychiatric treatment.
