by Chuck Sharman

After New Mexico’s Otero County agreed to pay a $1,050,000 settlement, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico granted dismissal on January 20, 2026, to a suit filed over the death of Jacob Gutierrez, 27, who committed suicide while he was detained at the Otero County Detention Center (OCDC) in December 2023. The jail’s private medical contractor, VitalCore Health Strategies, agreed to an additional $960,000 payment, New Mexico Prison and Jail Project (NMPJP) attorney Steven R. Allen told the Santa Fe New Mexican. That brought the total payout to $2,010,000 for the suit brought by Rebecca Gutierrez on behalf of her son’s Estate.

Though Otero County has a population just under 68,000, Gutierrez’s suicide was one of four logged at the county lockup in Alamogordo in 2023. That’s “a shocking number for a relatively small-­population county jail,” NMPJP staff attorney Mallory Gagan told The Appeal.

Gutierrez made four unsuccessful attempts on his life in the first week after his incarceration on June 9. Incredibly, jailers then placed him alone in a cell where he had access to a phone cord, which he used to fatally strangle himself on June 17. Gutierrez advised a VitalCore nurse at his booking that he had a history of alcoholism, seizures and abuse of methamphetamines originally prescribed after a head injury sustained when he was 16. He was placed in an observation cell. But he apparently wasn’t observed when he took eight fentanyl pills the next day; after he confessed this to Alamogordo Police Department Off. Nathaniel Silva during an interview on the night of June 10, Gutierrez began having seizures. VitalCore nurse Mark Lain administered Narcan, and Gutierrez was rushed to a hospital. Yet “OCDC failed to investigate how [he] obtained and ingested such a large quantity of narcotics,” noted the complaint later filed on his behalf.

When Gutierrez was returned to the jail the next day, Lain again conducted the intake and ordered the detainee placed on suicide watch “per protocol.” But no suicide watch checks were ever performed, and Lain provided nothing more than a “routine” referral for a mental health evaluation, the complaint continued. When that evaluation was conducted on June 12, it was noted that Gutierrez was at “imminent risk” of self-­harm. Yet still no suicide watch checks were conducted. In fact, when the detainee complained that he was “being punished for taking a pill,” he was taken off suicide watch altogether. The next day, he was cleared for release into the jail’s general population.

Just two hours later, guards were summoned after Gutierrez was robbed of his mattress and blanket by fellow detainees. As they escorted him from the cellblock, he again went into seizures and fell to floor. Rushed to a hospital once more, he was found to have “ingested a large quantity of pills” in what was diagnosed as an incident of “self-­harm,” the complaint recalled. But just as jailers failed to investigate the source of the pills used in his first suicide attempt, they undertook no investigation this time, either.

More Attempts Before Detainee’s Suicide Succeeded

Before leaving the hospital, a “shank” fashioned from a sharpened spoon was found hidden in Gutierrez’s rectum—evidence of his third suicide attempt since his arrest. Yet when he returned to the OCDC on June 15, he was again left “unobserved in an observation cell,” the complaint noted. The following day, when he said that he “wanted to kill himself,” guard Joel Saavedra changed Gutierrez into a suicide smock and placed him in a holding cell for observation. But the cell was not hardened against suicide attempts. It even held a payphone with a cord that could be used for self-­harm, the complaint said.

Guards also allegedly failed to perform required 15-­minute checks on Gutierrez before he began experiencing seizures again. Guard Susie Loewen called Nurse Lain, but he refused Gutierrez’s request for transfer to a medical observation cell. An hour later, the detainee announced that he had a needle in his arm. Loewen again called Lain, who removed the needle. Gutierrez said there were more objects in the cell that he could harm himself with, but Lain told him to remove them himself and left, Loewen said.

She heard Gutierrez making another attempt to harm himself with a needle 20 minutes later and called Lain once more. He called the jail medical director, Andrea Stafford, who ordered guards to sweep the cell for objects that could be used for self-­harm. But apparently no one thought about the cord hanging from the payphone on the wall. The next day, on June 17, Gutierrez was found unresponsive with the cord wrapped around his neck. He was transported to a hospital, where he died without regaining consciousness on June 20.

His mother filed her complaint in the district court in June 2024, proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to accuse jailers and VitalCore staffers of violating his Fourteenth Amendment rights with their deliberate indifference to his serious risk of harm. She also sought to extend liability to the County for maintaining de facto policies that left Gutierrez unprotected from this risk. The complaint further accused VitalCore of negligent provision of medical care. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreements. PLN was unable to obtain a copy of the Estate’s agreement with VitalCore. The agreement with the County resolved all claims against its jailers, including OCDC Director Nena Sisler. See: Gutierrez v. Otero Cty. Board of Cty. Comms., USDC (D.N.M.), Case No. 2:24-­cv-­00555.

After her brother’s death, Gutierrez’s sister, Adriana Fume, said that no one from the jail offered condolences. They also returned to her just $40 of the $120 that she had put on his jail commissary account. As she explained to The Appeal, jailers said that the rest was eaten by booking fees—$10 charged each time he entered the jail, including each return from the hospital after making a suicide attempt that those jailers failed to prevent.  

Additional sources: The Appeal, Santa Fe New Mexican

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