Inside Tragic, Preventable Jail Suicide of Ryan Harmon

According to a lawsuit filed today, May 21, Ryan Harmon should still be alive.

A year ago this month, while being held in Larimer County Jail, Harmon, 43, suffered a mental health crisis that caused suicidal thoughts and desires — and his cell contained everything he needed to complete the act. Instead of keeping this impulse to himself, the complaint contends, he shared his plan widely with loved ones and jail officials. But guards and mental health professionals allegedly failed to intervene, much less place him on suicide watch.

According to the suit, the most proactive effort to address Harmon's situation was offered by a deputy who suggested that he clean his detention unit to alleviate his supposed boredom and offered him ramen noodles as a reward. The packets remained unopened when Harmon's body was found hanging in his cell at 10:36 a.m. on May 25, 2023. He was transported to a local hospital but survived only a few days.

Denver-based Holland, Holland Edwards & Grossman, PC is pressing the suit on behalf of four Harmon children: adults Ashley, Tyler and Caleb, plus M.H., a minor. Listed defendants include Larimer County's board of county commissioners and Larimer County Sheriff John Feyen, in his official capacity, as well as CorrHealth, a private company that provides medical and mental health care for the correctional facility, and two individuals, Deputy Sheriff Kyle Deneen and Oscar Palomino, a nurse employed by CorrHealth.

The suit accuses the defendants of "subjective and objective deliberate indifference" to Harmon's plight, and says that "rather than urgently intervening, they instead played a deadly Russian roulette-like jail game of fakery and gambled with the meaning of Ryan Harmon's state of mind until he hung himself."
"This wasn't a heart attack, but it was as serious as a heart attack," says attorney John Holland, who represents Harmon's estate in tandem with colleague Dan Weiss. "It should have been obvious to anyone, be they jailers or medical nurses. They couldn't have had more information and done less. It was a suicide waiting to happen that they knew was in the works."

Harmon was booked into Larimer County Jail on May 5 as a pre-trial detainee; he had been charged with several non-violent offenses, including second-degree burglary and trespassing. The suit stresses that he had a "known history of serious mental illness," including anxiety, substance abuse, dental problems, emotional instability and depression, and was taking Busiprone, described as "a psychiatric medication used to treat anxiety disorder." Upon his admission, he told a nurse about these conditions, and the next day, he formally requested "counseling related to severe anxiety and depression."

These issues were exacerbated on May 21, when Harmon and his cellmate, Nicholas Ivarson, were placed on quarantine status after Ivarson exhibited symptoms associated with COVID. Harmon said he felt it was unfair to isolate him, since he wasn't physically ill (he was never tested for COVID), and his agitation increased after a May 22 conversation with his public defender and a May 23 court appearance during which he learned of the sentence he could be facing if convicted of the charges against him.

From May 22 to 25, Harmon phoned multiple family members and a friend in which he "loudly" told them "that he was planning to kill himself," according to the suit. These expressions "could easily be heard by anyone in this part of LCJ, including deputies, nurses and Mr. Ivarson," whose new cell was only feet away from the space in which Harmon was housed, it continues. Ivarson said that Harmon was very angry during these calls, all of which were recorded, and could be heard "kicking things, making a ruckus and yelling a lot.... He moaned uncontrollably, sobbed and cried out" while making "very explicit and direct statements that he was planning on taking his own life."

Ivarson also heard one deputy tell Harmon "that if he did not stop making threats about ending his life, they were going to punish him by moving him to someplace upstairs where he did not want to be," the complaint states.
Nevertheless, on May 24, Harmon submitted a communiqué to jail personnel known as a kite, in which he wrote: "I was told 3 days in would be here for covid I'm negative please bring me back to gp" — the general population of the jail. But the kite was "ignored and summarily declared to be 'not a proper medical grievance,'" the lawsuit says. Harmon was told he needed to use another form in order to get "any kind of medical response."

As Harmon's suicidal declarations continued, Ivarson "tried desperately to warn LCJ deputies and CorrHealth medical staff" about his "very specific suicide plan," which included the use of a black rope from a plastic bag that had been left in his cell, according to the suit. But he was monitored less frequently than would have happened if he'd been put on suicide watch. Personnel checked in briefly on the evening of May 24, and the next morning, he was written up for discipline in a behavioral report after he refused to eat breakfast and yelled obscenities.

Another kite, in which he wrote, "I am losing my [mind] and here I do not have covid please I’m begging u to take me back to gp," wasn't read until several days after he hanged himself with that rope.

A year later, Holland emphasizes that the pain Harmon's death caused his children hasn't abated. "One thing that's become very clear to me while working on this case is that, whatever his foibles and faults, Ryan Harmon was beloved by his family — and he loved them very much," he says. "He maintained constant relations with all of them and provided good financial support when they were growing up."

Holland sees the fact that Harmon's final, desperate kite went unread during his lifetime as "haunting. Basically, they ignored him. They just wanted him to stop making noise. They made a conscious decision to disregard his suicidal statements, which stands the 8th and 14th Amendments on their head. Ryan had a right to be free of deliberate indifference, and the personnel at the jail breached it. And now Ryan is dead and his family is hurting. They don't understand why these people didn't protect their father. It's coming up on the one-year anniversary of his death, and they just haven't been given any answers. There's been no accountability, no acceptance of responsibility — and we made efforts to alert the county to this problem. Their position is that everything was done correctly, which does not seem true at all."

Westword has reached out to Larimer County officials for comment on the lawsuit. The Larimer County Board of Commissioners declined to comment, citing a "potential legal matter."

If you or anyone you know is considering suicide, help is available. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Colorado also offers 988, a free, confidential mental health and substance-use assistance line that offers 24/7 call-, text- or chat-based support.

Click to read the Estate of Ryan Wayne Harmon versus Board of County Commissioners for the County of Larimer, Colorado, et al.