Lee County Deputies Tied Suspect to a Chair, Gagged Him, and
Pepper-Sprayed Him to Death

Mike Riggs | December 23, 2011

From Fox 13 in Tampa comes the horrifying story of Nick Christie, a
62-year-old Ohio man who was detained by the Lee County Sheriff's Office
for being publicly intoxicated. While Christie's wife asked that he be
taken to the hospital, Lee County cops decided instead to strip Christie
naked, tie him to a chair, cover his face, and then pepper spray him
repeatedly, until he died:

The District 21 Medical Examiner ruled his death was a homicide because
he had been restrained and sprayed with pepper sprayed by law
enforcement officers. But to this day, nobody has ever been charged with
a crime, and the Lee County State Attorney cleared the sheriff's office
of any wrong doing.

It's been more than two and a half years and his wife still can't accept
what happened.

"I was shocked. This was something out of a horror movie," says Joyce
Christie. She said her husband was depressed and was showing signs of
erratic behavior a few days before leaving for Florida.

She called authorities and pleaded with them to take her husband to a
hospital and be given his medications. Instead, he was taken to jail for
disorderly intoxication.

Her lawsuit alleges he was pepper sprayed 10 times over a 48-hour
period, at times while in a restraint chair.

Monshay Gibbs was a deputy trainee at the jail at the time. In a video
deposition, she testified that she thought the way Nick Christie was
treated was excessive.

"He had a spit mask on and was naked," she said on the video while under
oath. Gibbs testified that Christie pleaded with guards to take off the
spit mask because he couldn't breathe.

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