Man says Riverside County jail guards ignored pleas for help for 12 hours

Nov 03,2025

A man who was denied medical care for 12 hours after being assaulted in a Riverside County jail required two emergency surgeries when finally taken to the hospital, to treat a severe infection and remove an organ, according to a recently filed lawsuit.

Johnathin Onello claims he was severely beaten by other detainees after being booked on suspicion of theft at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio in March. He says he then waited hours to be taken to the hospital while guards from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department didn’t believe his pleas for help. When he awoke from two surgeries to remove his spleen, ruptured from the beating, the guards had left.

A sheriff’s department spokesperson said the agency does not comment on open court cases.

It was the second case in a matter of weeks filed against Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, and his department, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California by the Rancho Mirage law Christopher Damien Palm Springs Desert Sun 10/31/25, 5:02 PM Riverside County jail guards ignored man’s plea for help, lawsuit says https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/local/2025/10/29/riverside-county-sheriff-jail-guards-lawsuit/86825092007/ 1/5 firm, Walter Clark Legal Group, claiming the jail staff failed to provide timely medical care to incarcerated people.

It’s a claim that has dogged the department for more than a decade, since even before Bianco was first elected in 2018, after a federal judge ordered a consent decree to force reforms on a system plagued by inferior medical care.

And the suit joins 15 other open cases in the federal court claiming neglect and wrongful deaths in the county’s jails. Deaths in the jails surged there in 2022 and have remained above average, according to state data going back to the 1980s. Cases have recently settled at a cost of more than $13 million to county taxpayers.

The Clark law firm’s other case was filed on behalf of Clifford Mathews, a man who is said to have died after he was arrested while seeking medical care at a hospital and not provided follow up treatment before it was too late.

Hours of complaints ignored

While Onello survived, his complaint claims he almost wasn’t so lucky. After he was booked, he quickly found that people arrested for theft, like him, were housed with other detainees being held on violent criminal charges. He was assaulted but no deputies intervened, he claims. Soon after, he told jail workers he was experiencing severe pain, but said they didn’t believe him.

He was taken to various other cells in the jail due to his complaints, including a suicide watch cell where he was not able to contact anyone. He says he was not suicidal and does not know why he was taken to the cell.

After 12 hours of complaints about the pain, he was taken to a local emergency room. Medical providers there determined he had a ruptured spleen, which had caused a septic infection. He required surgery. When he came to from the anesthetic, he said, jail staff had left him there and didn’t come back in the seven days it took him to recover in the hospital.

“This action seeks to hold Riverside County accountable for the ongoing and brazen violation of civil rights of pretrial detainees,” said Onello’s attorney, Dan Bolton.

Bolton said by email that hospital records indicate deputies did not tell medical staff that Onello had been beaten by other detainees until two hours after he arrived at the hospital. He added that deputies refused to remove Onello’s shackles so he could undergo a CT scan until medical staff urged them to contact their superiors and tell them Onello’s infection posed a high risk of death.

Cover-up allegations in other cases

Victoria Flores, a former Riverside County sheriff’s jail captain, recently filed a suit describing how she says the department’s administration pressured jail leaders to downplay responsibility for deaths in the facilities she worked in — and to limit public knowledge. Sheriff Chad Bianco, she claims, ordered her to not speak to the county’s civil grand jury when they were investigating related issues.

The Desert Sun revealed several cases in which the department has not accurately reported, or reported at all, the fatal incidents in its jails to state regulators.

And previous reporting revealed ways in which the department has attempted to downplay its responsibility for what happens in its secured facilities. A man who was in a coma following an overdose was released to his family on bail before his death. An off-duty San Diego police officer who was highly intoxicated and suffering 10/31/25, 5:02 PM Riverside County jail guards ignored man’s plea for help, lawsuit says https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/local/2025/10/29/riverside-county-sheriff-jail-guards-lawsuit/86825092007/ 3/5 from a cardiovascular illness was released into the Murrieta jail’s parking lot where he was later found dead. Neither death was reported to the state because the sheriff had released them from custody shortly before they died.

Flores claims that another jail administrator ordered her to not create a paper trail after a man’s overdose and he was soon released, with sheriff’s officials expecting he would die. It was not clear from official records whether the man survived — or whether the sheriff’s department even knows.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department experienced an unprecedented surge in deaths of incarcerated people in 2022. With 19 dying in the county’s custody, the local jails became some of the deadliest in the nation. The California Department of Justice cited a concerning rise in custody deaths when it announced an ongoing civil rights investigation of the department the following year.

An investigation by The Desert Sun and The New York Times found the county’s jails have experienced the highest murder rate of any large jail system in the state. One county jail in Murrieta had three homicides in four months. Deputies at that jail were not trained properly to conduct security checks required by law and atrisk detainees were not diligently monitored, several internal department reports found. While official data has not been released, the reporting found that violence has proliferated in the jails in recent years.

Onello claims that guards were not monitoring and did not intervene when he was assaulted by other detainees. He is seeking damages to be determined at trial for, among other things, the department’s failure to safely house detainees, protect them violence and maintain order in the facilities where people are incarcerated.