The family of a man who died in an Atlanta jail cell after allegedly being “eaten alive” by bugs has settled their lawsuit against Fulton County for $4 million.

Lashawn Thompson, 35, was arrested on June 12, 2022, for a misdemeanor simple battery charge. He was sent to Fulton County Jail and placed in the psychiatric wing because he had mental health issues. Three months later, on September 19, Thompson “was found dead in a filthy jail cell after being eaten alive by insects and bed bugs,” family attorney Michael Harper said in a statement on Facebook (WARNING: disturbing images).

Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted 6-0 on Wednesday to approve a mediated settlement of $4 million to Thompson’s family, Inside Edition reported. Harper told the outlet that the family will not be making a statement regarding the settlement.

“The Fulton County Commissioners’ vote speaks for itself,” he said.

Ben Crump, an activist attorney who also represented the family, sent a joint statement out with Harper following the settlement.

“While we are satisfied to reach settlements in these matters with Fulton County and unidentified entities for undisclosed amounts, we are nowhere near the end of this journey to full justice,” the statement said. “We will continue to work with the Thompson family — and the community that rallied behind them — to ensure that a tragedy like this one never happens to another family or takes one more life.”

“Lashawn’s life mattered, and together, we can demand and motivate significant change in his name. That will be the legacy of Lashawn Thompson,” the statement continued.

Crump previously said Thompson had schizophrenia and did not receive the medication he needed, adding that Thompson was neglected for 93 days and became malnourished and dehydrated, losing 30 pounds.

“…[I]t is the opinion of this forensic pathologist that Mr. Lashawn Thompson died due to severe neglect,” wrote the pathologist hired by Thompson’s family to conduct an autopsy. “The combination of dehydration, rapid weight loss, and malnutrition complicated by untreated decompensated schizophrenia led to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia of Lashawn Thompson. Had Mr. Thompson received adequate care during his incarceration at the Fulton County Jail then he would not have died at the time that he did.”

The Fulton County medical examiner had listed Thompson’s cause of death as “undetermined.”

Harper, the attorney for Thompson’s family, said in his Facebook post that jail records show that officials at the facility, as well as medical staff, “noticed that Mr. Thompson was deteriorating, but did nothing to administer aid to him or to help him.”

“They literally watched his health decline until he died,” Harper added. “When his body was found one of the detention officers refused to administer CPR because, in her words, she ‘freaked out.’”

First responders attempted to save Thompson’s life, but were unsuccessful, USA Today reported.

Harper described the cell where Thompson was kept as “not fit for a diseased animal.”

“He did not deserve this. Someone has to be held accountable for his death,” Harper continued.

Texas Republican Governor Gregg Abbott rebuffed claims from the Mexican government that pinned the deaths of migrants this week on a buoy barrier installed by his state in the Rio Grande.

Two bodies, likely of migrants attempting to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border, were found Wednesday, one of which was recovered near buoys in the river that are a part of Abbott’s newly installed border barrier. The Mexican government was the first to inform the public about the incident and linked the deaths to the buoys, after which Abbott’s office rejected the explanation.

“The Mexican government is flat-out wrong,” said Abbott’s spokesman Andrew Mahaleris, according to the Washington Examiner. “To be clear, preliminary information points to the drowning occurring before the body was even near the barriers. The Texas Department of Public Safety previously reported to Border Patrol the dead body floating upstream from the barriers in the Rio Grande.”

The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was notified by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) about a “lifeless body caught in the southern part of the buoys.” Texas DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez, however, said the river’s stream moved the dead body “down into the buoy,” explaining that the buoy did not lead to the death, the Examiner reported. The 1,000-foot stretch of buoys is placed in a shallow area where it is easy to walk across the river, according to Olivarez. 

“The water is between knee and waist level,” Olivarez said. “There’s no way the body would have drowned there. … There’s nothing in the buoy — no objects, no sharp objects, no wire, no hook.”

Olivarez said Mexico acknowledged the second body recovered was found “miles upstream from the marine barriers.”

Mexico claimed that Abbott’s barrier in the river is a “violation of our sovereignty.” 

“We express our concern about the impact on the human rights and personal safety of immigrants that these state policies will have, which go in the opposite direction to the close collaboration between our country and the federal government of the United States,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

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The U.S. government has also targeted Abbott for installing the buoys, filing a lawsuit against Texas last month. The Department of Justice claims that it was unlawful for Texas to put up the barriers and said there were humanitarian concerns. 

“The floating barrier poses a risk to navigation, as well as public safety, in the Rio Grande River, and it presents humanitarian concerns,” a warning letter from the department said.

The DOJ lawsuit argues that Texas is violating the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, a law that prohibits the “creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress, to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States.”

Abbott’s office said migrant drownings happen all too often, in part, because of the Biden administration’s border policies. 

“If President Biden and [Mexican] President Lopez Obrador truly cared about human life, they would do their jobs and secure the border,” Mahaleris said. 

Leif Le Mahieu contributed to this report.