The family of Cecilia Covarrubias filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the County of Santa Barbara charging that county authorities displayed “deliberate indifference” to the care and protection of Covarrubias, who died by suicide in the jail.
Covarrubias was arrested in her car November 2024 in an intoxicated state. Arresting sheriff’s deputies alleged Covarrubias used her car as a weapon as she sought to escape.
In the lawsuit, filed late last year, the family’s attorney, Dale Galipo, noted that Covarrubias had made remarks to law enforcement officials expressing a suicidal intention. Despite this, Galip charged, she was placed in an observation cell with a telephone cord in it — a cord Covarrubias would ultimately hang herself with. Galipo argued in his brief that Covarrubias should have been placed on suicide watch and in a cell that allowed clear visible access if not continuous video contact.
Jail officials not only failed to monitor Covarrubias every 15 minutes as suicide watch protocol calls for, Galipo argued, but they failed to provide timely medical attention after her body was discovered. Had deputies used a defibrillator on Covarrubias, her life could possibly have been saved. All this qualifies as a pattern of willful and deliberate indifference to what jail personnel should have recognized as a foreseeable risk, Galipo alleges.
To each of Galipo’s many allegations, attorneys for the County of Santa Barbara replied, “County lacks knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations and on that basis denies each and every allegation contained therein.”
The case, still in its infancy, has yet to get to the discovery stage. The county indicated it was demanding a trial by jury. Galipo, a Woodland Hills attorney, has made a career out of pursuing wrongful death cases against law enforcement agencies.
