Jailing Princola: A hopeless ending for a mentally ill teenager

Guards locked her in a shower stall. She screamed for help. They wouldn't find her until three hours later.

By Michael Anthony Adams

The screaming had stopped long before Princola Shields was found hanging lifelessly inside an Indiana Women’s Prison shower.

She’d been crying out from her locked bathroom stall for hours, several inmates told IndyStar, begging nearby officers to tell her what she’d done wrong.

Only three weeks remained on her prison sentence, but officers moved her into temporary confinement after, inmates said, an argument in the chow hall. Before entering her new cell, however, she was placed in a stall no bigger than a hallway closet. She was left there alone for three hours, inmates said.

An empty safety restraint chair sits in a cellblock at the Johnson County Jail, where Princola Shields was incarcerated before she was sentenced to state prison. Photo: Michael Anthony Adams

They said her cries — described as frantic and childlike, laced with threats of suicide — were ignored. By the third hour, the cries stopped.

This 19-year-old woman, with a documented history of attempted suicides and diagnoses for several mental illnesses, was alone Sept. 21, 2015, when she tightened the shower curtain around her neck. When her breaths slowed and her pulse weakened, no one was there to help.

Indiana Department of Correction officials acknowledged “internal and external” investigations into Shields' death, but they would not share any details from those investigations, citing pending litigation filed on behalf of Shields' family. It's not clear what, if any, action was taken as a result of her death.“Obviously this person was a high risk, and one of the things we know about high-risk people, you can’t leave them alone, and you can’t give them access to means where they might be able to kill themselves,” said David Miller, a psychologist experienced in working with suicidal youths. “This was clearly preventable.”

The Indiana State Police, too, declined to comment on their investigation at the prison, citing an exemption in the state’s public records law that covers ongoing investigations.

Although authorities would not comment on what transpired in the hours before Shields took her life, six inmates who spoke to IndyStar described a scene that would be in clear violation not only of what experts say are the best practices in handling inmates with a history of mental illness and suicide threats, but also of the prison's policies.

More broadly, experts note, Shields’ case is an example of a larger issue: the difficulty public safety officials face when dealing with suspects and inmates who suffer from severe mental health issues. More than 6,000 inmates in Indiana have been diagnosed with mental illness.

According to prison policy, officers should have checked on Shields every 30 minutes. Inmates, however, told IndyStar that no one ever checked on Shields — not even when she shouted out that she was dying, which, according to the policy, should have prompted even more frequent checks.

When Shields screamed out that she would kill herself, as inmates told IndyStar, officers should have remained with her, according to policy, until a mental health professional arrived.

But no one came until it was too late.

Years of abuse

Princola Diane Shields was 16 the first time she threatened to kill herself.

She had been arguing with her mother about underwear that her mother considered inappropriate for someone Shields’ age. So Princola held a kitchen knife to her belly, saying she would stab herself. Then she locked herself inside a bathroom, saying she would overdose on her mother’s medicine.

Her mother called police. Officers were able to handcuff Shields and take her to Community Hospital North for a crisis assessment. A social worker there wrote that Shields said the suicide threat was only a way to get her mother’s attention.

An IndyStar review of years of Department of Child Services and juvenile court records shows a similar pattern in Shields’ life.

The fights were most often with her mother, according to DCS records, with one report saying, “Princola appears to have been a longtime victim of verbal and physical abuse going back to her early years of childhood." She’d get into an argument with a family member, usually over boys. Then she'd get into a fight, run away or threaten to kill herself. Police and social workers would arrive, and the cycle would repeat a few weeks later.

One violent fight erupted between Shields and her mother in February 2012, after Shields reclaimed a coat that she had let her younger sister borrow, according to DCS records. Shields’ mother told her she was being “mean and hateful,” and the two began yelling at each other. Her mother then started whipping Shields with a belt, according to DCS records, before picking up a wooden backscratcher and clubbing Shields’ ankle, which the teen had injured earlier while playing basketball.

The fight, one of at least six police would respond to over the next couple of years, left Princola with a black eye and bruises. DCS forced her mother to take a drug test, told her how to properly discipline her daughter and continued to keep a close watch on the family, checking in multiple times a week.

IndyStar made repeated attempts to contact Shields' mother, but she did not respond to calls and messages left for her.

The teenager continued to make suicide threats, once after she was caught stealing a bracelet from her temporary foster mother's child, and again after she was accused of taking a volunteer's cellphone at the Indiana United Methodist Children's Home. On that occasion, staff members took her to Community Hospital North.

Shields began running away more often. Records show she ran away at least 12 times in less than a year, sometimes to escape arguments with her mother, other times just to get away.

Each time, though, Shields maintained the threats were just to get attention.

“To me, a red flag needs to go up,” said Miller, the psychologist. “There's lots of ways for kids to get attention. They do it all the time. Most kids don't threaten to kill themselves as a way to get attention.”

When mental health professionals accept a child’s explanation of threatening suicide as a way to get attention, it “tends to minimize” the seriousness of the situation, said Miller, who is also an associate professor of school psychology at University at Albany, State University of New York, and president of the American Association of Suicidology. Anyone who talks about wanting to kill herself or himself is sending a clear message, he said, and the threat should always be treated seriously.

“A lot of times when people don't treat it seriously," Miller said, "that simply reinforces the individual's viewpoint that they're not valued.”

At 17, Shields acted on her most reckless threat when she cut out the screens from her mother’s bedroom windows and stood on the window.

Mental health professionals ultimately diagnosed Shields with major depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and severe anxiety.

But it was Shields’ arrest in January 2015 that seemed to send her into an even deeper depression.

Police pulled over Shields for an expired license plate and a broken headlight. The officer saw an open warrant for Shields for not appearing in Greenwood City Court after a shoplifting incident six months earlier.

She was held overnight in the Marion County Jail before being transferred to Johnson County Jail the next day. Within 24 hours, a fight broke out.

Deputies found a large group of inmates gathered in the back of a cellblock. As officers tried to handcuff Shields and wrestle her to the ground, she continued pushing toward another inmate.

During the struggle, Shields pulled her arms away from one deputy, elbowing another in the eye as her arms swung through the air. The deputy later wrote in his report about a “sharp pain” in his eye and a “thin scratch” across the lower eyelid.

Shields was charged with battery against a public safety officer, resisting law enforcement and disorderly conduct. She was sentenced to a year in state prison.

In May 2015, she was put on suicide watch for cutting herself while at Rockville Correctional Facility, according to a letter she later wrote to the judge who sentenced her.

A month later, she was put on suicide watch again, she told the judge in the same letter, this time for tying something around her neck at the Indiana Women’s Prison.

They were the fifth and sixth times Shields had threatened or tried to kill herself.

No response

Experts say that what happened the day of Shields' death — placing someone with a serious mental illness in temporary confinement — might have exacerbated her disorders and increased the likelihood of suicide.

I’ve never heard of a case in which an inmate is confined to a shower stall, for any reason.

Lindsay M. Hayes, Prison Suicide Expert

Indiana Department of Correction officials haven’t said much about Shields’ detention and eventual suicide.

Citing the pending litigation, they would not explain why officers hauled Shields off to lockup or why she was placed in the shower stall for more than three hours.

The litigation is a tort claim filed by Shields' family against the DOC in March. In the claim, the family alleges that medical records after Shields' death are inconsistent with documentation from the Indiana Women's Prison. The suit claims: "... it appears that the death was the result of misconduct." Nathaniel Lee, the attorney in the case, did not specify to IndyStar what type of misconduct the claim refers to, but an IndyStar review of medical files obtained from Eskenazi Hospital shows Shields’ death appears to be consistent with suicide. The state has until June 16 to review the claim and decide whether to pay or deny it.

According to the several inmates who spoke with IndyStar, Shields was confronted in the chow hall during lunch by two high-ranking prison officers because of a problem with Shields’ shirt. Shields brushed them off, saying she didn’t care because she had only 22 days left before her release.

Shields was then escorted to lockup at 12:15 p.m., according to prison shift documents, for a “236B disorderly conduct report.” The designation is used for a major offense that’s “disruptive and violent,” according to DOC policy, or that could threaten the security of the prison.

An inmate accused of major offenses, such as threatening staff, other prisoners or herself, can be placed in temporary confinement until an investigation is completed.

But Shields wasn’t taken to a cell. She was confined to a shower stall, inmates said, where she was left, unattended, while pleading for help.

“I've never heard of a case in which an inmate is confined to a shower stall, for any reason whatsoever,” said Lindsay M. Hayes, an expert in suicide prevention in jails, prisons and juvenile facilities. “It's something I have not heard of before, and I've been doing this for 37 years."

An inmate accused of major offenses, such as threatening staff, other prisoners or herself, can be placed in temporary confinement until an investigation is completed.

But Shields wasn’t taken to a cell. She was confined to a shower stall, inmates said, where she was left, unattended, while pleading for help.

Guards, according to prison policy, should have checked on her randomly, letting no more than 30 minutes pass between checks. When she began screaming for help, officers should have stepped up the frequency of their observations.

IndyStar obtained multiple documents filed on the day Shields was found hanging in the shower, including shift reports, visitor logs and daily housing logs. None of these indicates how often prison officers checked on her, and DOC officials would not comment on the frequency of their officers’ rounds.

Prison policies state that “any offender who appears to be exhibiting suicidal ideation shall be maintained under constant observation until a qualified mental health professional examines the offender and provides further instruction as needed.”

Instead, according to six inmates, officers told Shields to shut up. She wasn’t dying.

“The officer is not in a position to make any kind of call on what that behavior is reflecting,” Martin said.

When Shields began screaming that she was going to kill herself, an officer should have immediately called a mental health-care worker or, at the very least, a supervisor, Martin said. It’s up to a medical professional to assess an inmate and determine her treatment needs.

“We don't know how serious she is, the officer doesn't know how serious this threat is, so the officer summons somebody that can asses the threat level,” Martin said. “(Officers) can’t make that call.”

DOC officials again declined to comment when asked why Shields’ threat to kill herself wasn’t taken seriously, saying only that the prison “was aware of Ms. Shields' mental health diagnosis. … the care provided to her was consistent with the standard of care for her diagnosis.”

At 3:19 p.m., Shields was found unresponsive with a shower curtain tightened around her neck. Eight minutes would pass before one staff member would start CPR, and it would be five more minutes before a prison doctor reached the cellblock, records show.

Wayne Township emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from the prison 26 minutes after Shields was discovered.

By the time the first paramedics reached the cellblock, her heart had stopped beating. They snaked a tube down her throat to help her breathe, but it would be useless unless they could find a pulse.

More medics showed up, according to an ambulance run sheet obtained by IndyStar.

At 4:22 p.m., more than an hour after she was cut down, Shields was transported to Eskenazi Hospital. Paramedics had restarted her heart, but it was too late.

She was taken to the intensive care unit. Warm blankets were laid over her as her brother, grandmother, uncle and aunt stood at her bedside. Two officers from the Women’s Prison were there, too, watching her.

Shields was declared brain-dead, and her family agreed to have her removed from life support.

Shortly before 2 a.m. on Sept. 22, less than 11 hours after she had been found at the prison, Shields was dead. Her leg shackles were untethered, sitting beside her bed.

This article originally appeared on IndyStar.com.