The great-aunt of a Pontiac woman and her two children who froze to death in a field in January 2023 has filed a federal lawsuit against three current and former Oakland County Sheriff’s Office deputies who were tasked with looking for the young family in the days leading up to their deaths.
Monica Cannady, 35, her 9-year-old son, Kyle Milton, and her 3-year-old son, Malik Milton, were all found dead in a field in Pontiac after Cannady had the kids sleep outside because she believed the police were trying to kill them. The boys’ 10-year-old sister woke up Jan. 15, 2023, to find her mother and brothers had frozen to death.
“This case has been brought to shine a light on the pure and unadulterated deliberate indifference and bias of the Defendant OCSO Deputies, whose actions exacerbated Monica Cannady’s mental health crisis, and whose decision not to search for the family directly resulted in their deaths,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed by Cherry Cannady in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
Oakland County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Stephen Huber said the sheriff’s office “vehemently denies that any actions of OCSO personnel caused the tragic deaths of Ms. Cannady and her two young sons.”
“Numerous efforts were made by OCSO personnel to help Ms. Cannady and her children. However, she refused all such efforts made by OCSO deputies to help,” Huber said in a statement. “Importantly, at no time did any OCSO deputy have a legal basis to detain the family.”
A family member and several other concerned residents called the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Jan. 14, 2023, throughout the afternoon and evening, warning them Cannady was in the midst of a mental health crisis and she and her three young kids were wandering Pontiac draped only in bedsheets, according to the lawsuit.
“The OCSO knew that the family was vulnerable and in grave danger. Reacting with hostility, disgust, and blatant indifference to the welfare of this young family, the defendant Sheriff’s Deputies took actions which exacerbated Monica Cannady’s mental health crisis and placed her and her children in a heightened state of danger, directly resulting in her death, the death of two of her children,” according to the lawsuit.
Deputy Devon Bernritter, one of the named defendants in the lawsuit, was called at 1:14 p.m. Jan. 13 to McLaren Oakland Hospital in Pontiac for a wellness check on Cannady. She appeared to be impaired and in mental distress, according to the lawsuit, but Bernritted allegedly did not alert the sheriff’s office’s crisis team, a social worker or Child Protective Services.
Bernritter followed Cannady and her children in his patrol car, and according to the lawsuit he “later acknowledged that his actions exacerbated Monica’s fragile mental state, in fact cementing her paranoid delusion and fear that the police were trying to kill her and the children.”
He allegedly told Cannady she was “dancing on the line of child neglect,” according to the lawsuit.
According to the sheriff’s office, Bernritter tried to convince Cannady to come to the sheriff’s substation with him so he could get the kids coats. Cannady repeatedly declined the help, according to the sheriff’s office.
At 5:30 p.m. Jan. 13, 2023, Cannady and the kids were at her mother’s house for about a half hour, then Cannady left on foot with the kids about an argument, according to the sheriff’s office.
Deputy John Brish was sent to a substation at 4:35 p.m. to talk to Cannady’s aunt, who was asking for advice on how to commit Cannady and wanted to report her and the kids as missing. He went to Cannady’s home to check on her, but did not make contact, according to the sheriff’s office.
At 4:43 p.m., a person called police to report a woman with kids who were not properly dressed for the weather. Deputy Alex Kazal told the caller “there is nothing we can do about that” and left, according to the lawsuit.
The sheriff’s office confirmed this, but did not name Kazal as the deputy. According to the lawsuit, Kazal said he could not help look for Cannady because he’d been ordered to assist with a traffic stop in another location, which was allegedly not true.
Kazal’s sergeant ordered he go back to look for Cannady at 5:20 p.m. Jan. 13, according to the sheriff’s office. The conversation he had with the sergeant was recorded on his body camera, according to the lawsuit, and he “expressed anger and disgust at having to look for Monica Cannady and the children, whining that he wanted to do ‘real police work’ instead of following up on the call to look for them.”
Kazal allegedly said the Cannady family was just “homeless being homeless” and said there was no point in looking for them only to put the kids in “bulls— foster care and get raped,” according to the lawsuit.
Huber said the sheriff’s office reviewed the body camera footage and found Kazal’s statements did not meet its standard of conduct for deputies. It began an internal investigation, but Kazal resigned before a disciplinary review could be completed, Huber said. He did not name Kazal as the officer involved; the lawsuit did.
Kazal and another deputy searched the area the family had been seen in but could not find them. Three deputies returned after another call to police at 7:30 p.m. and searched until 8:06 p.m., according to the sheriff’s office. During this second search, which according to the lawsuit was only done after multiple 911 calls, Deputy John Brish allegedly mocked the caller, “telling his fellow deputies that he made sure to flash his flashlight around to make it seem as if he was searching for the family,” according to the lawsuit.
The next day, Jan. 14, Cannady continued to walk with her children through Pontiac, knocking on doors for help, according to the lawsuit, which said the sheriff’s office made no attempt to find Cannady and her kids. The sheriff’s office said it received no calls about the family on Jan. 14.
The family was found dead the afternoon of Jan. 15, after the surviving daughter knocked on a nearby house’s door to report her family was dead.
The lawsuit alleged the sheriff’s office has a “widespread or longstanding custom and practice of not providing assistance to individuals suffering from psychiatric or psychological problems, which failures, together with its lack of, or inadequate, training amounts to deliberate indifference towards the constitutional rights of individuals suffering from psychiatric or psychological problems.”
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