HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — A woman has filed a federal lawsuit against Harris County and the Harris County Sheriff's Office after her 19-year-old son with special needs was killed while he was in jail.
Fred Harris died Oct. 29, 2021. According to court documents, Harris was beaten and stabbed by another inmate while they shared a cell at the Harris County Jail. Harris died a few days after the attack. Michael Paul Ownby, 25, is the inmate accused in Harris' death. He was charged with murder.
Harris' mother said she begged for her son to be moved out of general population because he was special needs and weighed 98 pounds. According to the lawsuit, overcrowding and staffing issues at the jail led to Harris' death.
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"Had he just been in another cell, which he was supposed to be in, (his death) defiantly could have been prevented," Harris' mother Dallas Garcia said.
Harris' family said the jail knew about his disabilities and don't understand why they left him in a cell with Ownby, a 240-pound violent offender who had just attacked a guard two days before.
"I’m angry. We have cried enough. It’s time to fight," Fred Harris' grandmother Debra Pruitt said. "Nobody deserves this. Nobody should have ever gone through what Fred went through."
Harris was in jail because he showed a knife to someone he was afraid of, the family's attorney said. He said the teen had never been in trouble before and was a well-liked special education student when he attended Stratford High School.
"He was accused of showing someone a knife. He had never been convicted of a crime in his life, and based on the facts as we know it, would probably not have been convicted of this crime," attorney Randall Kallinen said.
After he died, Harris' organs were donated. His heart was given to a child.
"Fred walked in with a smile on his face. (He was) Carried out on a stretcher, ultimately, six feet under," Pruitt said.
Ownby is still in the Harris County Jail.
Kallinen said there is video of the incident. He hopes that now that the lawsuit has been filed, he's able to get all the evidence related to the case.
The Harris County Attorney's Office did not provide a comment on the lawsuit and the Harris County Sheriff's Office said an independent investigation by the Texas Rangers is ongoing.