Pubdate: Thu, 03 May 2012 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Ian Lovett CALIFORNIA MAN'S 'DRUG HOLIDAY' BECOMES FOUR-DAY NIGHTMARE IN HOLDING CELL LOS ANGELES - By his own admission, Daniel Chong planned to spend April 20 like so many other college students: smoking marijuana with friends to celebrate an unofficial holiday devoted to the drug. But for Mr. Chong, the celebration ended in a Kafkaesque nightmare inside a San Diego Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell, where he said he was forgotten for four days, without food or water. To survive, Mr. Chong said he drank his own urine, hallucinated and, at one point, considered how to take his own life. By the time agents found him on the fifth day and called paramedics, he said he thought he could be dead within five minutes. "By that time, I'd accepted that I would probably die there," Mr. Chong, a 23-year-old student at the University of California, San Diego, said Wednesday, three days after his release from the hospital. A spokeswoman for the D.E.A. said the case was under investigation, but confirmed that Mr. Chong had been "accidentally left in one of the cells" from April 21 until April 25, and that he had not been charged with a crime. In a written statement on Wednesday, William R. Sherman, the acting special agent in charge of the D.E.A. in San Diego, said he was deeply troubled by what happened. "I extend my deepest apologies to the young man," he said. On April 20, a Friday, Mr. Chong had gone to get high at a friend's house, in the so-called 4/20 ritual that sprang from a group of Northern California teenagers in the 1970s who liked to smoke marijuana at 4:20 p.m. The next morning, the D.E.A. raided the house. Agents found about 18,000 pills identified as MDMA, or Ecstasy, along with other drugs and weapons, according to the D.E.A., and Mr. Chong was detained, along with eight others. The suspects were taken to the D.E.A. offices, where they were interviewed. Then seven of the suspects were taken to the county detention center, and one was released. Mr. Chong said the agents told him on Saturday, April 21, that he, too, would be released, and put him in a holding cell to wait for them to take him home. "That door never opened again until Wednesday," he said. Instead, Mr. Chong was left alone in the 5-by-10-foot holding cell, with no food, no sink and no toilet - only a blanket. He said he could hear footsteps as agents walked by, other cell doors opening and toilets flushing. He kicked the door, screaming for water. But no one came. After the first two days, Mr. Chong said, he began to hallucinate, imagining "little Japanese cartoon characters telling me what to do." He clawed at the walls, convinced that they contained messages about where to find water. Three times he drank his own urine. The only sustenance he had, he said, was a packet of white powder that he found wrapped in the blanket, which turned out to be methamphetamine. On the fourth day, he said, the lights in the cell went out. Eventually, his hands still cuffed behind his back, he broke his eyeglasses with his teeth, as he contemplated killing himself. On his arm, he tried to carve a message: "Sorry Mom." He also swallowed a piece of the glass, which cut his esophagus. When agents discovered him on the afternoon of April 25, paramedics took him to a hospital, where his lawyers said he remained for five days while he was treated for kidney failure, severe dehydration and a perforated esophagus. Eugene Iredale, one of Mr. Chong's lawyers, said he planned to file a claim against the federal government, and, if that is denied, a lawsuit. "How they failed to realize he was there or ignored him is beyond comprehension," Mr. Iredale said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom