by Mateo Hoke
Davon ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. I’m not sure why he got the knife, but whenever Davon had an episode, he would go grab a weapon. He jumped over the balcony and basically just stood outside. I guess he was talking to his mom on the phone, and I believe his mom called the hospital and told them what was going on. When they sent officers from the Anchorage Police Department out, they spoke with Davon outside and Davon basically told them that he had a warrant in California. I guess they asked him what was going on and what happened, and Davon told them. The police asked me if Davon was on parole in California, and I said yes. They were like, “Well, he’s very forward with us, and he let us know that he had a warrant out for his arrest and he just wants to get help.” The police took Davon to Alaska Psychiatric Institute. The police were telling us that they would assign Davon an officer so that if he were to have an episode in the future, that officer would come out and deal with it. That’s what they were supposed to do for people with bipolar, schizophrenia, or mental illnesses.
We had been scheduled to have our first couples counseling appointment, but we missed our appointment because Davon was at the psychiatric hospital. He was there for four days. I went to visit him every day. He’d get an hour visit. I’d bring him food and we would talk. He was doing better and back on his medication. I feel like the medication was helping him. He was himself again. The hospital gave him lithium and Seroquel and he was able to take the lithium because Alaska isn’t hot like it is in California. So he was actually able to take his medicine without being sick or having any of the side effects that he did in California. When Davon was released from the psych hospital, the police contacted his parole officer and they were told that they could let Davon go, that he could be released to come home.
NEVER HEARD FROM DAVON AGAIN
I was still struggling with my postpartum issues, but I didn’t even really get to deal with my depression because everything happened so fast with Davon.
In March 2014, Davon and his father were fighting again. Davon was telling his dad he didn’t want to have anything to do with him. That’s when his dad called the police in Anchorage and told them he had a warrant in California. That’s when they came and got Davon, and he went to jail.
We were at Motel 6 to have some space from my mom. The kids were sleeping, and we hear a knock at the door, and I go to answer the door. It was the police, and they asked, “Is Davon here?”
They arrested him on the warrant in California. He went to jail on March 16, 2014. When he went to jail, the Anchorage police said the California police have a certain amount of time to decide whether they were going to come get him. After the police left and took Davon, I called his mom, and I told her what happened and that’s when she said they had just called the Anchorage police to check on him. They weren’t supposed to take him to jail. That’s when I told her, “Well, they said you guys called and said he had a warrant.”
I think I talked to him once or twice that day. I would ask him every day, “Did you take your medicine?” He said no. He said they still hadn’t given it to him in the jail. I had to put a request in. He told me he still didn’t have it. And that’s when he told me that California had until April 3 to come get him or Alaska had to drop everything and let him go.
While in jail Davon had punched a wall, like a brick wall, and broke his hand. I guess someone in a booking tank with him said something. I’m not even sure what was said, but something was said and instead of hitting the guy, he just hit the wall and he messed his hand up. I’m honestly not sure what really happened to his hand because Davon wasn’t taking his medication.
Then I heard from Davon that he’d been put in solitary confinement because he basically told a police officer that he wanted to fight him. Davon was moved to confinement because he had a towel on his head and the officer said to take the towel off his head, and Davon didn’t want to. I guess because his hair was wet. So he basically got into a confrontation with the officer and he told the officer that he’d fight him in his cell. He told him he wasn’t shit without his badge, and told him to take his badge off and “Let’s fight.” So the officer had him moved to solitary.
I was able to talk to Davon up until March 20, which is when they put him in solitary. The last time I talked to him I was on my way to church. Davon said he’d been asking for his medication, and they weren’t giving it to him. He was talking about becoming a hawk and that he’s Lucifer, things like that. That’s when you know Davon hit a point where he’s really manic, where he’s not even Davon anymore. I knew Davon was having an episode. I was scared. And I was upset they weren’t giving him his medication.
Davon told me to have a good day at church and he told me to pray for him. Every time before we got off the phone, we always told each other “I love you” and “See you later.” We never said, “Bye.” We always said, “See you later.” And that was our last conversation. I literally never heard from Davon again.
So when I still hadn’t heard from him the following day, which was a Monday, I called the jail to see why he wasn’t being given his medication. When I called, they said that he couldn’t have visits. He couldn’t talk on the phone. I asked when he would be able to have visits or talk again, and they basically told me to call every day to see when I could visit. I believe that’s when things started spiraling. I called every day, and every day they told me that he couldn’t have visits or phone calls.
I WAKE UP AND I’M AT THE JAIL
The jail wasn’t supposed to hold him past April 3, but they held him past his extradition time. The court had sent the paperwork to the jail to release him, but the jail said they lost the paperwork. On Friday, April 4, I was headed to the jail to find out what was going on and why he wasn’t being released. On our way down to the jail as I was leaving the house, I literally got this energy vibe through my body. I was nervous and I was looking at my mom, and I told her, “Mom, I just got this whole energy jolt from the top of my head all the way down to my toes.” I felt cold, like I had a whole energetic chill or something. I don’t know. I was throwing up that morning too.
When I got to the jail, all of a sudden the guards at the reception were like, “Oh, he can have a visit.” This was at 1:47 p.m. But they told me that the visiting period was full, so I should come back in a couple of hours. The only reason I didn’t go back that day was because I didn’t have a way to get up to the jail. My mom wasn’t back in time to take me during the later visiting hours.
Later that day, I was in my room talking to my little brother and my sister-in-law. My mom’s friend had passed away that winter, and we were all talking about how someone could be here and then the next day they could be gone.
During that conversation, Davon’s brother called me. He just said, “They got him. He’s gone.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” And that’s when he told me that Davon died, that the Alaska authorities called and told them that they found Davon slumped over in his cell.
This whole time, I kid you not, I’m thinking it’s a joke, like he’s playing. It’s the beginning of April, not April 1, but I’m still thinking he’s trying to play an April Fools’ joke. I don’t know. I just probably wasn’t trying to believe what he was telling me, but he was basically like, he’s gone. He’s dead. I don’t know. From the time that I got that phone call, I remember screaming, “You’re lying!” I remember falling on my floor. “You’re lying. Don’t say that. You know that’s not true. That’s my baby, he can’t be gone and stop lying.” I remember walking downstairs, going outside, like I guess I was ready to walk to the jail, but that’s all I remember. From there everything is a blank. I blacked out, probably for a whole hour.
I wake up and I’m at the jail. My mom, my brothers, my stepdad all took me there while I was blacked out. My pastor met us up there. I remember the officers telling me that he’s really gone and that it was from natural causes. I’m thinking, There was nothing wrong with Da
von. He’s perfectly healthy. How did he die of natural causes? When did he pass away? Because someone told me to come here today for a visit and that Davon was fine.
That same day, I’d been throwing up a lot. My mom asked what was wrong and I’m telling her I don’t know. She had seen that I hadn’t really been eating and then when I threw up, she wanted to go home and do a pregnancy test. I took the pregnancy test and found out I was pregnant.
Later on I found out from people that were in jail with Davon that they said he was actually talking about having some kind of feeling that I was pregnant. When I found out I was pregnant, it hurt. I was in shock, but when I first found out, I was in the bathroom for at least twenty minutes just crying. It was heartbreaking. It was surprising. The whole thing of me finding out I was pregnant that same day Davon died was very emotional. Very, very emotional. At the same time it was a bittersweet feeling, like he’s supposed to be here.
SCREAMING THAT IT HURTS
We weren’t getting any answers about what actually happened. I still didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it until I saw Davon’s body. That was the following Tuesday. Davon died the previous Friday. I later found out that he had passed away between 11 a.m. and noon. Literally, when the jail told me to come back for a visit Davon had already been dead for a couple hours.
Honestly, I don’t remember what happened after Davon passed away. I remember people from the church coming over, bringing food. My pastor was there. They were going to ship Davon’s body to California so he could be identified by his mother, next of kin, but I paid for his mom to come to Anchorage. She came that Monday night and then we went to identify the body together. They were supposed to wait to do the autopsy until she got here to identify him, but they told us that they had done Davon’s autopsy without his mom’s signature and had identified his body through his fingerprints. Until Tuesday, our knowledge was just that he had died, that he just stopped breathing. We didn’t know why he stopped or anything like that.
My mom had had a car accident not long before and she had hired a lawyer who did traffic incidents. When Davon died we called him for help and found out he also specialized in wrongful death lawsuits, so he became our lawyer for this case too. On Tuesday we found out that Davon had died of fourteen bleeding ulcers. We didn’t understand how he could possibly get fourteen bleeding ulcers. Our attorney hired another medical examiner to do another autopsy and the examiner said Davon was bleeding internally through his small intestine. Basically he was in a hyper-manic state, which can include high blood pressure. We had to go to the funeral home to see his body, and he had so many marks and bruises all over his body, and I’m like, What the heck? Why is all this on his body? He had really big knots all over his head. He had deep cuts where the handcuffs were. The skin was gone. You could see the white underneath. And you could tell he’d been dragged. He had drag marks from his toes to his knees. He was all scratched up. And on his ankles the cuff marks looked like they would if you dragged a dog.
Either that Wednesday or Thursday after Davon died, I met with my attorney. We started building our case. I had to get my call logs, like all the times Davon and I talked while he was in jail. That’s when I wrote down everything that happened from the day that Davon went to jail until the day Davon died. We had a memorial service for Davon here in Anchorage and then when we took his mom back home, she took part of his ashes, and we had another memorial service for him out in California.
We had to keep fighting for more information about what had happened to Davon. A couple people who were in segregation with Davon ended up getting in touch with me through the reporters who wrote about Davon’s death. One of the guys told me that Davon was screaming for help all the way up until he died. He was basically just screaming that it hurts, help, I need to go to the hospital. My stomach hurts. They have cameras all throughout the jail and we decided to fight to get the video of his time in jail released.
What am I supposed to tell my babies?
I cried the whole month of April, then May, then June. I was emotional. But at the same time I couldn’t let myself fall apart because I had the babies. It was very hard. It’s gotten a little bit better because I’ve learned to deal with it through the last several years, but even to this day it’s still very hard to deal with.
At the time Davon died, I wasn’t working. My second son, Davontae, was four months and Davon was working before he died so I didn’t have to. I didn’t start working until July of that year. I ended up moving out of my mom’s apartment into a place downstairs from her. My brother D’Aire moved in across from me, and my other brother Durrell moved in across from my mom. My mom is able to help out some with taking care of my three kids. I have a good support system here, but it doesn’t change the fact that Davon’s never coming home and that we will never see him.
After Davon passed away, I was trying to get grief counseling for me and Davon Jr. My son was almost four when Davon passed away and was able to get counseling, but then that stopped last September. He’s seven now. I think he still needs counseling because every time March and April come around, he starts acting out. He does things he usually doesn’t do. He’s been lying a lot and he’s not been himself starting in March.
When I found out I was pregnant the day that Davon died, I was like, What am I supposed to tell my babies? That’s one of the reasons why I fought so hard. I would have fought hard regardless for Davon, but it was more like when my kids want to know what happened to their dad, I want to have answers for them. I want to be able to explain to my kids why he’s not here.
THEY PEPPER-SPRAYED HIM
WHILE HE was naked and HAD HANDCUFFS ON
We had to wait almost a whole year to see the videos of what happened the day that Davon died. We went to court in June 2014. My attorney was married to a legislator in Anchorage, and they were actually involved in getting the video released. Everyone came together to help because they knew something went wrong. We couldn’t pinpoint what happened or anything like that until after we had the videos, but we all knew that something wasn’t right. In Davon’s case, it seemed like the guards kept him from calling me to tell me he was being beaten and pepper-sprayed.
When we finally got the video, it showed the guards throwing food at Davon through the slot in the door. You see it in the video. They just throw it in there like he’s a dog or something. And they pepper-sprayed him through that slot in the door. You see these long shots of pepper spray going in. Then they took him out of one cell and put him in another. The video didn’t show anyone beating him, but it does show five officers walking out of his cell, walking down the hallway high-fiving and laughing. When they brought him back he was naked. He was beat, and they just throw him in.
Then they cut his water off, and they pepper-sprayed him while he was naked and had handcuffs on. They pepper-sprayed Davon in two different cells. Each time, they took Davon out and had another prisoner go in and clean the pepper spray off the walls. One of the guys who was in his cell after him got in touch with me after he was released and said that there was so much pepper spray on the walls that he could barely breathe, that he was coughing the entire thirty or forty minutes that he was in there cleaning. The guards said they pepper-sprayed him because he was in a manic state, which he was. I mean, you guys weren’t giving him his medication, what do you expect?
In the video you see Davon using the water that was in the toilet to rinse his face after the pepper spray because his water got cut off. You see him walking back and forth in his cell. It gets to the point to where he couldn’t even walk to get water. When he was telling them his stomach was hurting, they were throwing his food in, and then it was like he couldn’t open his milk carton, he couldn’t even hold an apple.
I’m still looking into getting his death certificate changed because he didn’t die of natural causes, and on his death certificate it says “natural causes.” That’s false information, and I’ve
been saying that since the beginning. The Department of Corrections never admitted to anything, but they had to pay our kids $625,000. After attorney fees I think each kid has about $150,000 in a trust.
Honestly, I don’t think I would be able to fully get over it or start to heal until someone is actually held responsible. I mean you guys paying my children is still not bringing their dad back. Still not getting justice for their dad. Period. Y’all can have that money back if y’all could bring Davon back, but y’all can’t do that, can you? The people who took him need to be held responsible. All those guards walking down the hallway high-fiving and laughing, what kind of disciplinary action is being served to them for what they did? Until they’re held responsible, I don’t think I will honestly be able to fully heal from them taking Davon.
I SOCK HOLES IN MY WALL
I know I have major depression problems. I was telling the doctor. And stress. I’ve lost seventy-eight pounds. I eat like crazy and still don’t gain weight. I work a lot and go to school. I don’t do anything else. I go to work, come home, cook, go to sleep. I can’t be still, I can’t be in a place by myself. If it’s just me in a room and I’m just sitting there, I’m going to cry. I’ll be going crazy to the point I’m crying and I sock holes in my wall. I’m just angry.
Davon was my heart. He was my soulmate. He’s always gonna be in my heart, with me. I look at pictures of Davon all the time. His pictures are all over my house. I touch his face, I tell him I love him every day. The kids wake up and tell him, “Good morning.” Davon Jr. talks about his dad all the time, says he misses him all the time. I’ve had conversations with him and he’ll say he doesn’t like the police, things like that. He doesn’t really sleep at night. He’ll wake up in the middle of the night crying. Then he’ll say he wants his dad. I tell him that his dad is in the sky, that he’ll always be with him, that he’s always watching over him. He kind of gets the concept of what death is.
