$7 Million Paid by Ohio County for Jail Detainee’s Death in Restraint Chair
by Chuck Sharman
The Board of County Commissioners of Ohio’s Montgomery voted on September 30, 2025, to pay $7 million to the Estate of Christian Black, who died at the county jail the previous March after being violently extracted from his cell and placed in a restraint chair. The claims resolved by the agreement had all been filed by the Estate against jail healthcare contractor NaphCare Inc., whose medical personnel were present during the extraction yet failed to provide lifesaving treatment to the detainee before he became unresponsive in the restraint chair.
Black, 25, crashed a stolen vehicle on I-70 near Zaynesville on March 23, 2025, after an alleged burglary. He was taken into custody and booked into the Montgomery County Jail in Dayton. The next day, when he began to suffer a mental health crisis, a team of guards “dragged [him] from his cell” and “forced [him] face down on the floor” with “multiple” guards on his back, according to the complaint later filed on his behalf.
The guards proceeded to “administer[] pepper spray, deployed Tasers and placed [him] in handcuffs” before putting Black in an emergency restraint chair, bending him over at the waist as they struggled to put a spit hood over his head. “After over two continuous minutes of being bent over at the waist with his airway compressed, with NaphCare staff observing and failing to intercede, [Black] was finally sat upright,” the complaint continued.
That’s when jailers discovered that he was unresponsive. Surveillance video showed that he was “clearly apneic,” the complaint continued, taking only “agonal” breaths—each a “sporadic, gasping, labored, and often noisy attempt at breathing that occurs in the first minutes after cardiac arrest.” Ominously, the complaint noted, such breaths “are not a sign of life.” Yet when a NaphCare nurse felt for a pulse a minute later, she “did not initiate resuscitation,” instead applying a blood pressure cuff.
Three more minutes passed before another NaphCare nurse ordered guards to get Black out of the chair, after which she began “haphazard and improper chest compressions,” the complaint alleged. After another two minutes—now seven minutes after Black was noted to be unresponsive—an oxygen mask was finally delivered. When paramedics then arrived, the NaphCare staffers reported that Black “fell onto the ground and they found him in cardiac arrest”—neglecting to mention the restraint chair or the struggle to get him in and out of it.
Black never regained consciousness before he died at a hospital three days later. The County Coroner ruled his death a homicide resulting from “mechanical and positional asphyxiation.” County Sheriff Rob Streck told the Dayton Daily News that 10 jail employees were suspended while Black’s death was investigated, though six had returned to work by September 2025 “after attending training that included instruction on the emergency restraint chair.” The other four remained on leave.
With the aid of attorneys Michael L. Wright, Robert L. Gresham and Kesha Q. Brooks of Wright & Schulte, LLC in Dayton, Misti Black, the Estate Administrator, filed suit in state Court of Common Pleas for Montgomery County, accusing the jail’s NaphCare staffers of medical negligence and wrongful death, among other torts. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. See: Est. of Black v. Montgomery Cty., Ohio Comm. Pleas. (Montgomery Cty.), Case No. 2024-CV-05216.
Under its terms, the County agreed to pay $6 million to the Estate, plus another $1 million to Athene Qualified Assignment Corp. for annuities providing payments on Black’s behalf to unspecified beneficiaries. See: Resolution No. 24-1543, Bd. of Cty. Comm., Montgomery Cty., Oh. (2025).
Additional source: Dayton Daily News
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Related legal case
Black v. Montgomery Cty., Ohio Comm. Pleas. (Montgomery Cty.)
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | Case No. 2024-CV-05216 |
| Level | Court of Appeals |