The family of a 17-year-old illegal immigrant who died in the Galveston County Jail filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming authorities didn’t do enough to protect him.

Arturo Chavez of Webster was found Aug. 4 hanging by a blanket from a shower nozzle in his jail cell. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, a lawyer for Chavez’s family said.

Chavez’s family claims jail officials were warned that he might try to harm himself, but they still placed him in solitary confinement, “a very psychologically debilitating situation, especially for a minor,” attorney Randall Kallinen said.

Family members also pointed to a Texas Commission on Jail Standards report showing that Galveston County was among the counties with the most inmate suicides in a four-year period, even though it had a relatively low inmate population. They want Galveston County to change the way it screens inmates for suicide tendencies.

Kallinen said Chavez was depressed because he had been beaten and faced deportation to his home country of Guatemala.

Force questioned

Chavez was hospitalized after he was arrested, Kallinen said. The family asserts that League City police arrested him for driving without a license. When he ran from the city jail, police beat him at least three times with a baton and used a Taser on him at least twice — an excessive amount of force, Kallinen said. Chavez is 5 feet 3-inches tall and 125 pounds, he said.

League City police could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kallinen said police didn’t file a report detailing their use of force and shouldn’t have given Chavez’s bloody shirt back to his family because it should have been kept as evidence. He said the police department’s description of events doesn’t explain why Chavez had bruises around his eyes.

Chavez’s family members and his 15-year-old girlfriend staged a protest outside the League City Police Department on Wednesday. They clutched signs that said “stop the attacks on immigrants” and “stop police brutality.” Chavez’s mother and father are in Guatemala, where his body arrived Monday, Kallinen said.

Representatives of the League of United Latin American Citizens said they’ll use Chavez’s case to show that police departments large and small are overzealous about enforcing federal immigration laws.

Screening process

Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said he could not comment on the specifics of the case because the office had not been served with the lawsuit and the circumstances of Chavez’s death are still under investigation by the sheriff’s office.

Maj. Mike Henson said all inmates in the jail are screened in face-to-face interviews for suicidal tendencies when they enter the jail. When inmates indicate they have suicidal tendencies or have had them in the past, they’re referred to the jail’s medical division, Henson said.

“Depending on the severity of the case, we’ll put them on a suicide watch until we can get them hooked up ... with the jail psychiatrist,” he said.

Kallinen said the family is taking the county at its word that Chavez’s death was a suicide, but he said they won’t be certain until they’ve seen all of the evidence, including records from the medical examiner.

Suicide count

Chavez’s suicide was the first in the jail this year, Henson said. Records of past jail suicides weren’t immediately available, but a Texas Commission on Jail Standards report published in 2004 showed four inmate suicides in the Galveston County Jail from 1999 through 2003. Only Harris, Dallas and El Paso counties had more inmate suicides.

Bexar was the only other county with four inmate suicides. Its average daily inmate population was more than four times Galveston’s.

There were 121 inmate suicides in all county jails in Texas from 1999 through 2003. Asphyxiation by hanging accounted for 112 of those deaths.

‘You’re gone’

Kallinen said Chavez attended Clear Creek High School and worked at Dos Mas Mexican Restaurant, 103 W. Bay Area Blvd., in Webster.

Each week he sent about $150 to his parents in Guatemala, Kallinen said.

“He was doing what every other teenager would be doing,” he said. “He had a girlfriend. He was working in a restaurant, going to school. I think he was getting used to the American life, and all of the sudden they’re going to say, ‘Oops, hey, you’re gone.’”

The family is seeking burial expenses, changes to county policies on mental health and medical assistance for jail inmates, and an order for “proper force training” for League City officers. The lawsuit names League City, Galveston County and Sheriff Gean Leonard as defendants.

Chavez was initially identified as Juan Esteban Batentzun, 18. Tuttoilmondo said that may have been a fictitious name.