Jermaine Bell, 38, was rushed to a hospital after drinking bleach following the verdict. He's been incarcerated since 2018 for pulling a gun on employees at Millennium Engine Plating while disguised as a courier.
A Florida man drank a cup of bleach in a courtroom after hearing his guilty verdict announced, according to published reports.
Jermaine Bell, 38, pulled a gun on employees at Millennium Engine Plating while disguised as a courier in December 2018, and since the armed robbery, Bell has spent more than three years in custody, according to Fox News.
Shortly after the jury read the verdict aloud, Bell was seen drinking the bleach from a white disposable cup, according to a video published by Local 10.
According to the outlet, an officer approached Bell with a trash can and attempted to have him spit out the liquid, but Bell continued to drink from the cup until he sat down.
Immediately after drinking the bleach, Bell became very visibly ill and was transported out of the courtroom on a stretcher and taken to the hospital for treatment, according to the published reports.
According to reports, Bell is in stable condition. It remains unclear how he was able to get the bleach in the courtroom, and his family is questioning why no one intervened.
“I see him drinking something that’s not right,” Reverend Jerome Starling, a distant relative of Bell, told Local 10.
“His attorneys are letting him drink it. Corrections letting him drink it. All of a sudden I see him collapse. And I said ‘how could this happen.’”
Starling told the outlet that there needs to be accountability for what happened in the courtroom.
According to Local 10, a cousin of Bell’s recorded the incident and told the outlet that she immediately tried to save him.
“I was the only one like that jumped up and tried to get him help,” she told the outlet. “[It’s] very emotional for the whole family. We thought we were going to lose Jermaine that day.”
According to the published reports, the Miami-Dade County Corrections and Miami-Dade Police are investigating the incident.
