Inset: Yuri Brand (Pointer & Buelna, LLP). Background: Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California (KTVU/YouTube).
The family of a man strangled and suffocated with a mattress by his cellmate in a Northern California jail has filed a lawsuit alleging jailers negligently placed the convicted sex offender with a history of violence into the victim’s cell 46 minutes before the bloodshed.
Yuri Brand, 39, was allegedly killed by Bryson Levy in September 2023 at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
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According to the complaint, Brand shouldn’t have been in the cell at all.
“Jail officials failed to place Brand in appropriate mental health housing, despite his known mental health condition that he had previously received treatment for at the jail,” said the family’s attorney, Adanté Pointer, of the Oakland-based law firm Pointer & Buelna. “And then they ignored Levy’s violent history and placed him into close quarters with someone he could victimize, all the while neglecting to properly supervise the two men. We intend to find answers to why Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies at the jail housed Mr. Brand with a violent individual in the midst of a crisis, rather than in appropriate mental health housing and how their loved one could have been subjected to such a horrific death, and why his family has not received answers about what happened to Mr. Brand.”
A spokesperson for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime.
According to the lawsuit, the series of events leading to Brand’s death began when he was arrested for a home burglary and taken into custody on Sept. 8, 2023, at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, about 40 miles southeast of San Francisco.
For unknown reasons, the document said, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office placed him in the general population and not mental health housing, even though deputies knew he was schizophrenic and had gone without medication for days.
Five days later, he got a cellmate — Levy — who, according to the lawsuit, was having a mental health crisis. He also had a documented criminal history of violence, sexual assault, and the use of deadly weapons, the lawsuit said.
Within 45 minutes of being placed in Brand’s cell, Levy allegedly killed Brand, using a mattress to suffocate him. Brand was found on the floor of the cell on Sept. 13, 2023, with Levy on top of him, court documents said.
Brand’s mother, Erica Edgerly, told local Fox affiliate KTVU what a deputy told her on the phone
“‘Your son’s dead,”” she relayed to the station. “I said, ‘Where?’ Where’s his body?’ He said, ‘I can’t tell you that. It’s an ongoing investigation.”
The family was left with additional questions about his horrific death. The autopsy report described Brand’s tongue as having “no contusions or bite marks,” yet when the family examined his body, they discovered Brand’s tongue had a jagged serration that ran from the tip to the throat, the lawsuit said. The family also questions why there is no explanation about why his genitals appear to have been damaged, court documents said.
“In light of the foregoing, it stands to reason that Mr. Brand was subjected to not only a deadly but lengthy attack without it ever being heard or observed by any Alameda County Sheriff’s Office deputies or other County employees,” the lawsuit said.
Levy is being held without bail at the Santa Rita Jail on a murder charge in Brand’s death. He’s expected to appear in court for a plea hearing on Oct. 4, online booking records show.
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