Daniel Chong, a university student in San Diego has received $4.1 million dollars from the U.S. government after he was abandoned for more than four days in a prison cell, his lawyer said, as reported by the BBC. Chong said he drank his urine to stay alive, and tried to carve a message to his mother on his arm, news reports said.
Chong had been held in a drug raid in 2012, but told he would not be charged.
Nobody returned to his cell for four days. The U.S. Department of Justice's inspector is investigating what happened. Chong said he slid a shoelace under the door and screamed to get attention before five or six people found him covered in his feces in the cell at the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego headquarters, news reports said.
Upon being rescued, Chong spent five days in a hospital and recovered from kidney failure and dehydration. He also reportedly lost 15 pounds.
Chong was one of nine people detained in the raid in April 2012. Chong's lawyers said a police officer then put him in the holding cell and told him: "We'll come get you in a minute," the BBC reported.
"It sounded like it was an accident - a really, really bad, horrible accident," Chong said.
The 5 by 10 foot cell did have any windows, and Chong did not have access to food or water while he was trapped inside for four-and-a-half days. He says he began to hallucinate on the third day, news reports said.
"I didn't just sit there quietly. I was kicking the door yelling," he said, as reported by the Associated Press. "I even put some shoestrings, shoelaces through the crack of the door for visual signs. I didn't stay still, no, I was screaming."
At one point, Mr Chong admitted, he thought he was going to die. He broke his eyeglasses by biting into them and tried to carve a "Sorry Mom" farewell message. He managed to finish an "S".
DEA spokeswoman Allison Price confirmed that the $4.1m settlement had been reached, without providing further details, according to the AP. The incident prompted the head of the DEA to issue a public apology last May, saying he was "deeply troubled" by the incident. Chong, an economics student at the University of California, says he plans to buy his parents a house, BBC also reported.
