FREE RASHAD!!!!!

 

This petition is written on behalf of Rashad M. Riddick. He is currently being held at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, receiving treatment. He needs our help, and for us to come together on his behalf. The situation described below is very serious, and may shock you, but it is essential that you are made aware of how both the Virginia Department of Corrections and the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services are treating individuals under their care, and how they are purposely setting our young brothers and sisters up for failure at the first indication of strength and the ability to unify and bring peace. 

Please read. 

On November 8th 2010, Rashad Riddick was released directly from Red Onion State Prison after having spent 3 full years in solitary confinement. While there, he, along with 9 other individuals were drugged with a combination of substances to include PCP, LSD, bath salts, antipsychotics among other known and unknown drugs that altered their thinking and actions. 

Upon his release, he had not been provided any of the necessary resources that will have allowed him to readjust into society. Then, just 90 days after he was released, he was charged and later found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity for killing 3 very close relatives....all as a DIRECT result of his being drugged, isolated, and essentially tortured at these racist, inhumane prisons. 

In any case, two days before he was set to begin trial Rashad was made to sign an agreement that some of the most experienced attorneys could not even understand. It essentially states that he is to remain in the custody of the Commissioner for the remainder of his life. 

CUSTUDY was not to mean PHYSICAL CUSTODY in the sense of being confined to a state mental hospital. It's essential design was for Rashad to go through a gradual release process, and later, after completing a number of programs, be released under RESTRICTIONS.

Now, he is in the clutches of a mental health system that continues to conspire against his progress through a process designed to treat. Not punish or make worse. 

In 2023, an Ethics Consultation was completed and it specifically stated that if Rashad remains in a Maximum Security psychiatric setting it would lead to future maladaptive behaviors....yet they have kept him there. 

In 2018 he was placed on an entire psychiatric ward by himself with absolutely no human contact for a full 19 months after he himself had been attacked by another patient. His natural reaction of defending himself was their justification. 

Then in 2020 it happened again. Right before a meeting with the Disability Law Center of Virginia, a patient threw a cup of water in his face for absolutely no reason (it was later determined that a staff member told him to). Rashad reacted....the other patient was placed in seclusion for 30 minutes. After the meeting, Rashad was walking to his room and the patient he had just gotten into it with had already been let out of seclusion....predictability another physical situation occurred...

 Rashad was again put on a ward by himself with absolutely no human contact....on this occasion, for 11 months.

In February of last year a federal court appointed Duke University School of Law to represent him in his lawsuit against the state for holding him in solitary Confinement. The same week he had oral arguments before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and won, a patient from another ward who had a history of attacking individuals and spitting on individuals was moved to his ward. 4 days later he spit on Rashad....Rashad responded... the hospital pressed charges on Rashad. They did nothing to the patient who spit on Rashad. 

There is a clear pattern of conspiracy regarding Rashad's situation. 

Rashad needs your help. He has been hospitalized since 2014. Prior to this, he was held in seclusion for almost 4 years fighting his case and demonstrating that he was drugged by state prison guards at both Wallens Ridge and Red Onion State Prison and that his actions were a direct result of State officials purposely allowing this chain of events to happen...even at this very moment there are individuals who are currently imprisoned at both Wallens Ridge and Red Onion State Prison who are actually setting themselves on fire to protest the inhumane torture tactics used on individuals housed there. 

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