Family says woman on life support after attack in Fulton County Jail

ATLANTA — The family of a 20-year-old Atlanta woman who is hospitalized after being attacked in the Fulton County Jail says the woman is on life support, and her family is blaming lapses in security at the troubled facility.

Tyriana Ledbetter was beaten and choked inside her cell during an attack last week. Authorities have charged Shania White in the incident and allege she cleaned up the area, tried to prevent staff from entering the cell and pretended she was Ledbetter during an officer’s security check, according to an arrest affidavit.

Ledbetter was found unconscious under a bed inside the cell.

Investigators are trying to determine exactly when Ledbetter was attacked. A detention officer found her at about 5:20 p.m. on Sept. 23 — about 24 hours after she entered the cell without any injuries, according to the affidavit.

Ledbetter had red ligature marks around her neck, deep scratches on her neck and chest, and a ruptured eye socket, according to the charging papers. The sheriff’s office said she was immediately taken to the hospital.

“There’s no telling how long she was there and shoved up under a bed, basically like a piece of just trash, just nothing, as if she was not a regular person,” Ledbetter’s mother, Gloria Buckner, said at a Thursday news conference outside the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Atlanta.

Buckner added that her daughter is at Grady Memorial Hospital, unresponsive and with severe brain injury.

“She is on life support,” Buckner said. “She has a feeding tube.”

“My child might not ever be the same or make it through this condition,” she said. “So I’m left to put the pieces (together) and find out what has really happened to my daughter.”

The attack is the latest for the overcrowded and notoriously dangerous Rice Street jail, which is under a consent decree following a scathing Justice Department investigation that detailed “abhorrent” and unconstitutional conditions there.

So far this year, four people have died while in Fulton Jail custody, the most recent on May 27, according to the sheriff’s office.

Several relatives of Ledbetter appeared at the news conference, and were joined by civil rights activist John C. Barnett of South Carolina.

Buckner said she didn’t find out her daughter was in the hospital until about four days after she was taken there, when a sheriff’s office chaplain called and informed her.

The sheriff’s office said Buckner was notified two days after her daughter’s hospitalization because Ledbetter had not provided emergency contact information at intake.

Buckner also said at the news conference that being required to ask permission to visit her daughter in the hospital was painful.

“We can’t even bring my sister a teddy bear or a blanket,” said Ledbetter’s sister, Tyshun Barney, 21, during the news conference Thursday. “We can’t even bring her nothing to her hospital to show her love.”

Later in the day, the sheriff’s office said a judge had released Ledbetter from custody and that family members can now visit her according to hospital regulations.

The affidavit for White’s arrest gives the following account:

Ledbetter was placed in an observation unit with White at 5:20 p.m. on Sept. 22, and was last seen on security footage at about 6:30 that evening.

At some point she had a dispute with White, as shown by video footage of an inmate pointing and someone saying: “Look, they’re fighting.”

During a security check, White told an officer that she was Ledbetter when the officer asked her where her cellmate was, according to the affidavit. White was seen throughout the night at the cell door trying to prevent staff from entering.

White, 27, also was seen crouching near where Ledbetter was subsequently found, and was cleaning in the front of the cell while sitting on a bed.

Other inmates gave White a bar of soap and tissue, which were not recovered in the cell. The affidavit describes the crime scene as “immaculate,” but an Atlanta Police crime scene team discovered signs of blood in an area that had been cleaned.

White, who is still in jail, left the cell with no visible injuries and without notifying staff of Ledbetter’s wounds, according to the affidavit. She is charged with aggravated assault, aggravated battery and tampering with evidence in the incident.

She had been booked Aug. 15 on charges of shoplifting and three drug offenses, according to jail records.

Ledbetter was booked May 22 on charges including aggravated assault, armed robbery, possession of a weapon and theft.

Ledbetter’s family said she has cognitive disabilities and mental health issues.

“We’re hoping for justice for my sister first,” Barney, her sister, said in an interview Thursday evening from the hospital. “And second of all, this never needs to happen to a 20-year-old ever again.”