ATLANTA — The family of a man stabbed to death at the Fulton County Jail is filing a lawsuit, alleging now that he had been stabbed on multiple prior occasions inside the facility before he was killed in August.
The family of 23-year-old Dayvion Blake told 11Alive's Tracey Amick-Peer he had already been stabbed three other times inside the jail before the fatal stabbing incident in August.
According to the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, four men were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, all with stab wounds on Aug. 31. Around 3:29 p.m., deputies said one of the inmates, later identified as Blake, had died.
At a news conference Wednesday, Blake’s family spoke out about his death - claiming a rival group on his same floor popped broken locks to get to Blake before stabbing him multiple times.
The family's attorney says they used weapons made from the crumbling jail facility itself - and the family argues the jail should be held at fault.
"If the locks were working properly, if the jail was not crumbling where they could make shanks and knives, if there was better staffing and observation, this death would have been prevented," said attorney Michael Harper.
Blake's aunt, Sonya Marquis, said they had little communication about their loved one from the jail.
"No one notified us that he was going through so much, to die alone, we want justice and we want answers," she said.
The family plans to send notice of a lawsuit by the end of the week.
It will come as the latest in a string of legal actions against the jail and outcries by family members, with six people having died in Fulton County Sheriff's Office custody since July as well as federal and state inquiries examining the jail's deteriorating conditions.
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat has acknowledged the jail walls are crumbling. In recent months, Labat has campaigned to build a new jail, which could cost $1.7 billion or more.
The main holds about 2,600 inmates on a typical day, even though it has only 2,254 beds in cells. The remaining inmates sleep in plastic bunks on the floor in common areas.
Fulton already pays to house some of its remaining 1,000 inmates outside the county, but Labat has sought proposals to ship some inmates to private prisons on Georgia's southern border or in Mississippi