Jun 24, 2015 4 min read

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Three people, including two ex-jail employees, were indicted Wednesday in the death of a 21-year-old college student whose body was found in restraints in a county jail in Savannah, Georgia.

Two of those indicted, Maxine Evans and Jason Kenny, worked at the Chatham County jail and Gregory Brown was a contract health worker.

An indictment returned Wednesday charges all three with involuntary manslaughter. Kenny is also charged with aggravated assault and cruelty to an inmate. Evans and Brown are also charged with public record fraud and Brown faces an additional charge of making a false statement. It’s unclear if they have attorneys.

Mathew Ajibade, 21, was found dead Jan. 1 strapped to a restraining chair inside an isolation cell at the jail. The Savannah College of Art and Design student had been arrested after a fight with his girlfriend. The sheriff’s office has said Ajibade fought violently during booking and injured three deputies, one of whom suffered a concussion and a broken nose.

Attorneys for Ajibade’s family say he suffered from bipolar disorder and his girlfriend gave police a bottle of his prescription medication when they arrested him.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was called in to handle the case, and few details were released about what happened to Ajibade in the jail. On May 8, Sheriff Al St. Lawrence announced that nine deputies had been fired in connection with Ajibade’s death. On June 4, attorneys for Ajibade’s family released a copy of his death certificate, which showed the coroner had ruled his death a homicide caused by blunt-force trauma.

Dr. Bill Wessinger, the Chatham County coroner, said Ajibade suffered several blows to his head and upper body and some blood was found in his skull case.

“My recollection is none of them by themselves would have necessarily been fatal,” Wessinger recently said of the injuries.

Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap announced weeks ago that she planned to ask a grand jury for indictments in Ajibade’s death. The prosecutor’s spokeswoman, Kristin Fulford, did not respond to an after-hours email and call seeking comment Wednesday but earlier said Heap did not plan to comment any indictment.

Ajibade’s family in Hyattsville, Md., has hired attorneys including Florida defense lawyer Mark O’Mara, who defended former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Those lawyers have asked a Savannah judge to disqualify Heap as top prosecutor on the case, arguing she has political reasons to ignore possible criminal charges against the sheriff. Heap dismissed the claims as baseless.

O’Mara has said he suspects Ajibade was having a manic episode at the jail when deputies “beat the (expletive) out of him to get control of him.”

O’Mara said Wednesday that the indictment is “too little too late.” The fact that the grand jury found that there was aggravated assault coupled with the fact that there was a death should have led to a felony murder charge unless Heap wasn’t really trying to secure that charge, O’Mara said.

“That’s been our concern all along that she was going to whitewash this case as a benefit to the sheriff and in derogation to Mathew’s death,” O’Mara said.

He added, “It would be nice to say every one of them should have been charged with murder, but that might be unrealistic,” O’Mara said. “But here’s my frustration: We have been kept so in the dark about the facts in the case that we really don’t know.”

The case has put an uncomfortable spotlight on St. Lawrence, the 80-year-old sheriff who has held the office since 1992. The sheriff has promised changes since Ajibade’s death.

He fired the deputies deemed responsible, hired consultants to review jail operations and temporarily removed all stun guns from the jail until deputies could be re-trained in their proper use.

“I ain’t covering up for nobody. OK?” St. Lawrence told reporters at a June 4 news conference.

At the same time, the sheriff has stood up for his employees who work at the 2,300-bed jail. He said on average 41 deputies are injured each month in scuffles and fights with inmates.

The inmates are “not the nicest people in the world, a lot of them,” St. Lawrence said. “… I’m not running a summer camp here. I’m running a prison.”

The sheriff released a statement Wednesday saying he is saddened by Ajibade’s death and continues to work with Heap “to ensure justice is served.”