VA to pay $5.75M settlement to family of Army sergeant who died at Riviera medical center

Editor's note: This story concerns a 2019 suicide in Palm Beach County.

WEST PALM BEACH — The family of a U.S. Army veteran who died by suicide at the VA Medical Center in Riviera Beach in 2019 has reached a $5.75 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Department of Veteran Affairs.

The settlement with the family of Sgt. Brieux Dash, a 33-year-old Army veteran from Palm Springs, is believed to be one of the largest by the U.S. Department of Justice in a wrongful death case involving a suicide.

It concludes a lawsuit filed by Dash’s widow on behalf of his estate. In the lawsuit, Emma Dash alleged that the VA Medical Center failed to provide her husband with a place of safety and gave him “incompetent treatment” in the days before his death on March 14, 2019.

The lawsuit named Emma Dash and the couple’s three children — one adult daughter and two juvenile sons — as plaintiffs.

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In March, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks approved the settlement, pending final approval by the Department of Justice, court records show. The Bertling Law Group and Gilbert Employment Law, which both represented Dash’s family, announced the settlement July 5.

“After all the pain my family has gone through these past few years since losing Brieux, I’m grateful that this fight for accountability has finally concluded,” Emma Dash said in a prepared statement.

“Because of the VA’s negligence, three children are forever without their father. I hope that this serves as a lesson to the entire VA system, and that other families are spared the unimaginable pain we have gone through.”

A spokesperson for the Riviera Beah VA hospital said hospital staff could not comment on the settlement.

“While we cannot comment on the settlement, we acknowledge the tragedy that occurred while this Veteran was under our care,” a statement released Friday read.

Key preventative actions have been taken “to improve the care that we deliver and to ensure that this does not happen again,” the statement said.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Audit found several areas where training, equipment lacking

Brieux Dash was involuntarily committed to the VA facility three days before his death. Family members reported in the days after Dash’s death that he had been struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and had previously tried to harm himself.

An investigation conducted later that year by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Veteran Affairs faulted the medical center for a lax and “myopic” attitude to some aspects of patient care.

• The OIG report concluded that Dash “received reasonable care” from the hospital’s medical staff, but also found that several security cameras were not functioning properly in the unit where he died.

• It also found that more than half of the employees working at the VA Medical Center had not completed all the training requirements.

• While its staff was supposed to conduct checks in 15-minute increments for most patients, “it was possible to have a span exceeding 25 minutes when a patient was not visually observed by a staff member,” the report said.

• Investigators also found that staffing was at the facility was sufficient on the day that Dash died but noted that a nursing assistant assigned to conduct safety checks on patients performed other duties during that time, contrary to protocols.

Dash served in the Army from 2005 to about 2015 and twice had been stationed in Iraq, each time for about 18 months.

His troubles surfaced when he returned home from those tours of duty, his family said.

“If VA staff had done the bare minimum and cared for a struggling veteran who was on suicide watch, Sergeant Dash might still be here today,” Kevin Owen, one of the attorneys representing Dash’s family, said in prepared remarks.

“The VA’s safety shortcomings resulted in three children losing their dad,” Owen’s statement read.

For those in need of help

Help is available for people experiencing domestic violence or suicidal thoughts. Call the Palm Beach County Victim Services 24-hour helpline at 561-833-7273, or the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Death at VA Medical Center leads to $5.75 settlement for soldier's family