Jail deputy injured in October attack tried to flush inmate’s smelly, overflowing toilet
A Sedgwick County Jail deputy who was attacked by an inmate in October got punched in the face after he entered the inmate’s cell to flush a foul-smelling toilet.
The deputy, Shelby Maskrid, told an investigator “the toilet was overflowing with human excrement,” making the entire jail pod “smell so horrible that it was making him nauseous,” according to an affidavit unsealed last week in Sedgwick County District Court that gives more details about the Oct. 22 assault.
Other inmates in the pod had also complained about the putrid scent. It was so offensive, the deputy told an investigator, he felt like vomiting.
When the deputy went into the cell around 10:35 a.m., the inmate occupying it, 53-year-old Phuoc T. Le, “immediately got off of his bunk” and told the deputy “to get out of his cell,” the affidavit says.
The deputy tried telling Le he was “just going to flush his toilet,” but Le struck the deputy’s face with a closed fist, according to the document.
After taking the hit, the deputy pushed Le onto his bunk “and held him down” until he could press the panic button on his radio.
Le continued to try to hit the deputy, leading to a struggle where they struck each other multiple times until other deputies showed up. The attack lasted about two minutes, the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office said in October.
The deputy suffered a broken nose and hand that required surgery, as well as cuts and several bruises on his face.
In addition to being punched by the inmate, the deputy hit his head on a wall and metal desk in the cell during the fight, the affidavit says. He received treatment at a local hospital.
Le refused to answer any questions about what had transpired when an investigator tried to interview him later, according to the affidavit.
The Sheriff’s Office in an October news release said Le was in a single-inmate cell “due to repeated disciplinary issues” in the jail, 141 W. Elm in Wichita. He had “no apparent injuries,” the agency has said.
Le is now charged with one felony count of battery against a law enforcement officer. He was scheduled for a preliminary hearing Wednesday, but a judge postponed it until March 30 after a defense attorney asked for a delay so they could file a motion seeking a competency exam, to see if Le is currently mentally fit enough to stand trial, court records show.
He has not yet been arraigned, when a defendant would typically have their first chance to enter a not-guilty plea. His public defender declined to comment Thursday.
Le has been in custody since Aug. 29 and was being held on charges including public nudity and trespassing in a variety of city cases at the time of the attack, jail records show.
This story was originally published January 26, 2023 at 12:20 PM.
