CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The last time Brenden Kiekisz talked to his family, he told them that he feared he would never make it out of the Cuyahoga County Jail alive.
Kiekisz, a drug user who lived with mental illness, was in the jail after his Christmas Day arrest for failing to show up to court to address a misdemeanor ticket he got for panhandling more than a year earlier year earlier and a separate warrant on a probation violation.
The 27-year-old called his father Johnny Kiekisz from the jail and said: “Dad I’m not going to make it here. I’m going to go crazy. You got to get me out of here.”
The next time Kiekisz’s family saw him was two days later. He was braindead in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat. He died two days later, on Dec. 30, 2018.
Kiekisz’s death left devastated his mother, father and brother, all of whom gave their first interviews to cleveland.com since his death.
“It ruined all three of our lives,” Brenden’s mother, Paula Kiekisz said.
Nine people died in the jail since June 2018. Five where the result of suicide.
The circumstances that led to Kiekisz’s underscore the persistent problems in the jail that started to come to light after the spate of deaths that began last summer. The U.S. Marshals made a thorough inspection that uncovered “inhumane” conditions and a myriad of problems, and for the first time, the many in public learned that inmates in the overpopulated jail were regularly denied access to medical care and were subjected to lockdowns, called red-zoning, that sometimes spanned entire days.
Kiekisz’s died a little more than a month after the report was released.
During his short stint in the jail, Kiekisz never received medication for depression and anxiety, his family said, and he was not flagged as a potential suicide risk despite telling corrections officers he had tried to commit suicide days prior to his arrest.
His cell was one of several placed under forced lockdowns each day for no other reason than the fact that the jail had too few guards to properly supervise the inmates.
Jail medical officials had pleaded with jail officials in the months leading up to Kiekisz’s death that they needed to make simple changes to help curb suicides and attempted suicides. Those changes weren’t made until after Kiekisz hanged himself.
The jail is the subject of an FBI civil rights investigation and a criminal probe by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
“They didn’t give him his meds,” Brenden’s mother Paula said. “They didn’t put him on suicide watch. They knew it, and they didn’t do anything.”
‘He was a normal kid’
Kiekisz was born in Cleveland 1991 and his family moved to North Ridgeville five years later for the suburb’s better school system.
His hobbies were typical of suburban boys. He took up skateboarding, he road bikes, he went fishing with his family members and he often went to the Norwalk Raceway to watch the drag races.
“He was just a normal kid,” his father said.
In his youth, he was particularly close with his cousin Daina Howell. The two were the same age and they talked to each other and hung out on a regular basis. She died in a 2006 house fire in Cleveland that killed her boyfriend and two others.
This devastated Kiekisz.
“That really affected him,” his mother said. “That bothered him a lot. He talked about it all the time.”
As he got older, Kiekisz worked several jobs, including as a landscaper, at his father’s auto body shop and at a scrap yard.
He liked music— especially the Red Hot Chili Peppers— and as he got older, he wrote hip-hop lyrics and performed along with his friends at a few area venues, including the Phantasy Nightclub in Lakewood.
He began using opiates sometime in his late teens or early 20s, about the same time doctors diagnosed him with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, anxiety and depression.
Kiekisz was in and out of treatment programs for several years before he found the right fit, his family said. He never tried to hide his struggles with drugs from his family and they always tried getting him help when he needed it.
“He had good days and bad days,” his mother said.
Kiekisz had no run-ins with the law until he was arrested in July 2016 on a felony heroin possession charge. He pleaded guilty and was placed in the court’s drug treatment program, which would erase his conviction if he abided by the terms set by a judge.
He spent some time in the jail, and told his family that the food was especially disgusting, especially after he worked in the kitchen for a few days.
“He said, ‘Dad, I don’t think I can ever eat the food again,’” his father said. “I said, ‘C’mon, it’s not that bad.’ He said there was roaches— it was bad. Terrible.”
His time in the county lockup wasn’t all bad, his father said. Brenden talked about a corrections officer who was nice and offered encouraging words. When he was released from jail, the officer made such an impression on him he thought about becoming a corrections officer, his father said.
Once out of the jail Brenden struggled at times, and in 2017, he was issued a ticket for panhandling in Steelyard Commons.
But his family said the only times he ever missed court-ordered appointments was when he was getting in-patient treatment. He preferred the Highland Springs treatment center in Highland Hills. Anytime he felt he needed help, he’d head back there, his family said.
Christmas Day arrest
On Christmas Day, his father, his mother and brother Bret searched for him to convince him to come home for Christmas dinner. They found him outside in the snow without a coat or shoes. He was despondent and refused to come home with his family.
His father gave him his shoes and coat and drove home barefoot. A Cleveland police officer later that day arrested Brenden on an outstanding probation violation warrant, and for failing to appear in court in his 2017 fourth-degree misdemeanor panhandling case.
The next day, Kiekisz went in front of both a Cleveland judge and common pleas judge, who ordered him released. The common pleas judge found Kiekisz did not violate the terms of his probation and ordered him sent to Highland Hills for more treatment.
He never went.
The next day, and after Kiekisz called his father and told him he felt he wouldn’t survive his time in the jail, sheriff’s deputies knocked on his father’s door, and handed him the shoes and coat that he gave his son two days earlier.
The deputies told him that his son was found unresponsive in his cell and to call the sheriff’s office if they had questions.
The family rushed to MetroHealth hospital, where doctors told them that Kiekisz was braindead and would likely not survive.
“Those three days at the hospital, those were the worst days of my life,” his mother said. “There was no hope.”
Questions, but few answers
More than seven months later, the Kiekisz family has yet to hear from anyone at the county about Brenden’s death.
Not knowing what happened to Brenden in his final hours has left them tortured. The questions swirl in their heads at all hours of the day and night.
Why did he do it? Did he ask for help? Did corrections officers ignore him? Did an officer threaten or harass him, as has been the case with other inmates? What did he use to hang himself? Why wasn’t he put on suicide watch? Could his death have been prevented?
After not getting any answers, the family hired civil rights attorney Paul Cristallo, who said he plans to sue the county on behalf of the family.
Kiekisz’s mother said she wants to see changes at the jail and is upset that it seems like that hasn’t happened. She follows the news, and was disturbed when Colbert died five months after her son.
But most of all, she said, she wants to know what happened to the son who used to tease her about her affinity for Bon Jovi.
“Them holding information is what’s really bothering me,” she said. “I just want answers and justice. It’s not going to bring him back, but I need to know. That was my son.”