ST. CLOUD, Minn — A family is grappling with grief and searching for answers about the death of their loved one, Nick Norberg, who was behind bars at the Stearns County jail.
Norberg was admitted to St. Cloud Hospital on Oct. 16, 2022, under dire circumstances. Bodycam footage captures him pleading for water and expressing his fear of dying.
A police officer’s response, "You're not dying, you're at the St. Cloud Hospital," juxtaposes the tragic reality: Nick didn't stay long at the hospital — or alive.
“He was my little brother,” Alex Norberg recalls emotionally. Susan Norberg, Nick’s ex-wife, shares a similar heartbreak, recounting the loving father he was and questioning why he was taken to jail rather than remaining at the hospital.
Just hours after leaving the hospital, Nick was found dead, naked, on a jail cell floor.
Susan’s suspicions grew upon reading the autopsy report. “When I saw that autopsy report and saw that he arrived nude I had no idea we were going to go down this rabbit hole of this…” she said.
The rabbit hole is the information she uncovered as the family prepared to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the hospital and jail.
It alleges that Nick’s last hours were spent "spiraling towards an agonizing yet avoidable death."
Jeff Storms, the family’s attorney, claims it’s a case of medical malpractice. “He told people I can’t breathe; I’m having a heart attack. I’m going to die, help me. He told everybody that and they let happen to him exactly what he said was going to happen.”
Nick’s downward spiral began, according to his family, nine years prior when a severe car crash resulted in a traumatic brain injury. They say his injury altered his behavior, leading him down a path of addiction – first to alcohol, then to inhaling the mind-altering gas in canned air keyboard cleaners.
Inhalant addiction affects over 2 million Americans and can cause death from cardiac arrest or suffocation, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“I wanted to save him, I wanted to help him, I didn’t know what to do,” said Susan. Although their marriage ended, they remained close, with Nick frequently in and out of treatment facilities and living with his brother Alex.
On his final day, Nick purchased a case of dust removal spray from a St. Cloud Walmart and began huffing in the store bathroom. Police were called three hours later.
As officers attempted to handcuff him, Nick continued to try to inhale the substance. Ultimately, officers used a taser to subdue him. Police then transported him to St. Cloud Hospital, where their bodycam video shows him writhing on the floor of the emergency room.
Nick appears incoherent and can be heard screaming that he couldn’t breathe and was dying. But hospital records stated that he was "alert and oriented, talking in full sentences. PD requesting medical clearance at this time."
Despite the known deadly risks of huffing and an abnormal ECG test, less than an hour and a half after his arrival Nick, was discharged to jail.
Susan questions the medical care he received: “Was he hurting his body? Yes, yes he was. But does that mean he doesn’t get to have medical care? Does that mean he gets to be treated like a ragdoll on the floor?”
The family’s lawsuit claims there were multiple failures of the standard of care.
“So, despite that problematic ECG reading,” said attorney Jeff Storms, “they didn’t do a complete cardiac work up on him, they didn’t take blood, they didn’t assess any of the things you would need to reasonably assess, to determine, whether or not he was at risk for acute heart failure, heart attack, a host of different cardiac dysfunction.”
Less than five hours after being sent to the Stearns County Jail, Nick died.
Stearns County and correctional staff are also named in the lawsuit.
At the jail, records show the normal booking process was bypassed. Video shows Nick was placed in a cell, held prone and stripped naked while a guard pushed his face down into a mattress.
He was too weak to dress in the jail uniform that was later passed into the cell.
Records and video show Nick rolling around on his cell floor and sticking his head in the toilet. Water passed to him through the cell door spilled – and he repeatedly told guards he was struggling to breathe.
Correctional staff took his vitals and contacted on-call medical staff who prescribed an anxiety pill.
Video from the cell shows Nick’s face and chest turning purple as he lay on a mattress on the floor. “They watched him change colors and did nothing about it,” said Storms.
Records show that Nick had already stopped breathing when a guard performed a "wellbeing check" on him at 1:30 a.m. Video shows the guard glancing through a window in Nick’s cell for less than a second before walking away.
The lawsuit says checks are “not adequate” if officers only confirm “that there is a human body in the cell.”
“No person could have seen Nick Norberg and thought to themselves anything other than this man needs to see a doctor,” said Storms.
The official investigation concluded there was no wrongdoing, and that Nick caused his own death by excessively huffing inhalants.
A few years ago, that would likely have been the end of the investigation.
However, in 2021 a new law was passed in response to KARE 11’s “Cruel & Unusual” investigation that exposed coverups and numerous preventable deaths behind bars. That law, known as the Hardel Sherrell Act, mandates a death review by a doctor for all in-custody deaths.
While death reviews are not public records, a Department of Corrections memo indicates “several concerns” were discovered in the death review regarding Nick’s care at the St. Cloud Hospital.
Nick’s ex-wife, Susan, the daughter of a police officer, hopes that their lawsuit will prevent others from experiencing similar neglect. She laments, “He was supposed to go to a treatment center the next day – they had a bed for him, waiting.”
Stearns County and St. Cloud Hospital have not yet responded to the lawsuit. The hospital sent KARE 11 a statement that says, “We are deeply saddened by the death of Nickolas Norberg and the loss of life experienced by his family and loved ones. Due to pending litigation, CentraCare cannot comment further at this time.
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