$6.35 Million Paid for Ohio Jail Detainee’s Spinal Cord Injury Caused by Guard
by Chuck Sharman
Ohio’s Lorain County and the City of Elyria reached a settlement on June 16, 2026, paying a total of $6.35 million to Jeffrey Fry, a former detainee in the County jail who was left permanently damaged after a former guard slammed him head-first into a wall, injuring his spinal cord. Fry reached a separate settlement with LifeCare Ambulance, the company summoned to the jail after his injury.
As PLN reported, Fry was homeless when Elyria cops picked him up in May 2023 on a warrant for failure to appear on an earlier misdemeanor charge. Taken to the Lorain County Jail, he was handcuffed and barefoot when surveillance video captured a sudden and violent assault by booking guard Brian Tellier, who slammed Fry’s head into a glass wall near the body scanner.
After Fry went limp, Tellier attempted to force the detainee’s body into a sitting position. He and Elyria cops then stood around watching Fry writhe in pain until emergency responders arrived from LifeCare. Tellier and the responders proceeded to wrestle Fry onto a gurney, failing to immobilize his spine, even though he told them: “[Y]ou just broke my neck.”
Fry was diagnosed at a hospital with a traumatic spinal injury requiring surgery. Meanwhile, staffers back at the jail—including Tellier’s father-in-law, jail administrator Maj. James Gordon—spun a lie that Fry was an aggressive drunk who provoked Tellier. Fortunately, surveillance video preserved what really happened to Fry, who lost 80% of the use of his arms and can no longer dress himself. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.16.]
With the aid of attorneys Nicholas A. DiCello and Jeremy A. Tor of Spangenberg, Shibley & Liber in Cleveland, Fry filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in 2024, accusing the County, then-Sheriff Phil Stammitti, Tellier and other jailers, as well as LifeCare, of violating his civil rights.
Meanwhile, Tellier was found in violation of jail policy for the take-down of Fry. He was put on modified duty, until Sheriff Jack Hall took office in January 2025 and suspended him. A criminal investigation was opened, leading to a felonious assault charge against Tellier, along with two counts of tampering with records in an attempted cover-up. However, a jury in County Court of Common Pleas acquitted him on all three counts in December 2025, the Elyria Chronicle reported.
Tellier, 36, was then awarded $30,000 in back pay for the six months he was on suspension to await trial. But he was fired by Hall almost immediately, after pleading guilty that same month to one count of child endangerment—for giving his son a THC gummy that put the child in the hospital. For that, Tellier was also sentenced to a year in jail. He agreed to give up his law enforcement career, which dated to 2021 with the County and six months before that with the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, according to the Elyria Chronicle.
By that point, the parties to Fry’s suit were well on their way to negotiating a settlement. Under its terms, the County agreed to pay $5.6 million, and the City agreed to pay another $750,000; both payouts were inclusive of costs and fees for Plaintiff’s attorneys. Fry’s settlement with LifeCare was undocketed, and the amount of the firm’s payout remains undisclosed. See: Fry v. Lorain Cty., USDC (N.D. Ohio), Case No. 1:24-cv-00126.
One positive outcome of Fry’s grim ordeal was the creation of a new position at the jail. Ryan Kolegar now serves as the first Inspector General of the County Corrections Department, the first such position in any Ohio county, tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct made against jail staff.
Additional source: Elyria Chronicle
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