BROOKLYN — Correction officers at a Brooklyn jail served inmates carrot cake laced with rat poison during a Thanksgiving Day meal, a new lawsuit charges.
The lawsuit claims that officers at the Brooklyn House of Detention at 275 Atlantic Ave. served 16 prisoners the tainted dessert on Nov. 26, 2015, leading many of them to seek medical attention and in some cases get their stomachs pumped.
Correction officers caused the inmates to “suffer food poisoning from contaminated carrot cake not necessarily limited to containing poisons or including rat poison,” according to the lawsuit.
The officers then tried to cover up the poisoning “by attempting to collect and destroy the carrot cake they had given plaintiffs” before investigators arrived on scene, the lawsuit says.
Investigators were able to save samples of the dessert for “preservation and testing,” and some of the events described in the lawsuit were recorded on surveillance video, the suit adds.
Some of the prisoners or their family members called 311 or 911 immediately following the poisoning, the lawsuit says. Several of the prisoners were treated at the jail’s infirmary while others were taken to local hospitals, where they had their stomachs pumped and received CAT scans, according to the lawsuit.
The officers also “refused to administer adequate and proper medical care” leading to “additional pain and suffering,” says the suit, which accuses the defendants with “negligent, intentional, careless and reckless conduct.”
The inmates are now demanding the city pay them $1 million each in damages, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court last week and names the city, the Correction Department, the jail’s officers and staff as defendants.
Gregory Zenon, the lawyer representing the prisoners, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
A spokesman for the NYC Law Department, which represents the city, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
