Search icon

Crime

26th Nov 2022

Man downs cup of bleach in courtroom after armed robbery verdict is read

Steve Hopkins

‘We thought we were going to lose Jermaine that day’

Horrifying footage shows the moment a desperate man drinks an entire cup of bleach and collapses as he’d found guilty of armed robbery.

Jermaine Bell somehow got hold of a cup of the chemical and chugged it as the verdit was returned in a Miami court. The video shows the 38-year-old collapsing almost immediately and being rushed from the court by paramedics.

Bell had been in prison for three years after posing as a courier and pulling a gun on employees while at the Millennium Engine Plating factory in Miami on 2 December 2018.

Onlookers were astonished Bell, who survived the ordeal and is now said to be recovering in hospital, was able to get ahold of the liquid.

Reverend Jerome Starling, a relative of Bell told Local 10 News: “I see him drinking something that’s not right.

“His attorneys are letting him drink it. Corrections letting him drink it. All of a sudden I see him collapse. And I said how could this happen. This should not be happening to people who are in custody at all.”

Bell’s cousin, who recorded the video, said she instantly tried to help him. “I was the only one like that jumped up and tried to get him help,” she told the news outlet.

“[It’s] very emotional for the whole family. We thought we were going to lose Jermaine that day.”

Bell was later seen being taken from the court house on a stretcher while wearing a prison jumpsuit.

The Miami-Dade County Corrections and Miami-Dade police are investigating how Bell got ahold of the cup of bleach.

Related links: