SPRINGDALE - Hour after hour, for four full days, Adriana Torres-Flores was locked away and forgotten in 8 1/2-by-9 1/2-foot cell in the Washington County Courthouse, with only a metal table, two benches and a light bulb that never went out. She had nothing to eat or drink. There was no toilet. Thursday passed. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday - although Torres-Flores had no watch to tell the time. She slept on the floor with her head on a shoe.
She drank her own urine, she said.
Panicked and afraid she would die, Torres-Flores pounded on the steel door with her hands and feet, and yelled. No one heard her. The threat of snow had thinned the courthouse staff Friday.
The building was closed all weekend.
It was Monday morning before the bailiff who had put her in the holding cell, intending to have her taken to jail, opened the door and realized his mistake.
Can you say "oops?"
So, what did Ms. Torres-Flores do to deserve such treatment?
Well, see, she was accused of selling bootlegged CDs of music at a local flea market. Oh, yeah, police also say she's also an illegal alien who faces deportation. And probably for that reason they arrested her on this absurd charge. That's also probably why she was to be shipped off to the county jail to await trial in April. So that she could be turned over to the Feds and deported after.
You do have to wonder if this would have happened to someone who didn't appear to police to be an illegal alien. Just sayin'.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.)