During the discovery process, her attorney, Danielle Pena, asked the county to turn over all materials relating to what happened to Suarez. Suarez filed a lawsuit against the county in March 2020, arguing that jail staff had failed to protect her from harming herself.

Amid the struggle, Suarez bit a deputy.Īnother deputy involved in the incident described what happened next. Deputies scrambled to pin her to the ground and handcuff her. Suarez, then 23, was in the throes of a drug-fueled paranoia and was convinced that if she didn’t blind herself, jailers would torture her and her family.Ī deputy who was involved in processing Suarez, and recommended restraining her so she could not harm herself - an action that potentially could have saved Suarez’s eyesight - later complained that her report had been altered to remove the fact that her supervisor rejected that recommendation.Īccording to official reports, Suarez began to claw at her eyes while waiting to be fingerprinted. The investigation came to light as part of a lawsuit filed by Tanya Suarez, who was high on methamphetamine and hallucinating when she was booked into the jail for being under the influence of an illicit drug on May 6, 2019. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department failed to disclose an internal affairs investigation that reveals new information about the events leading to a young woman blinding herself in a cell at the Los Colinas jail in Santee.

Altered time