A university student in the US city of San Diego has received $4.1m (£2.7m) from the US government after he was abandoned for more than four days in a prison cell, his lawyer said.
Daniel Chong said he drank his urine to stay alive, tried to carve a message to his mother on his arm and hallucinated.
He was held in a drug raid in 2012, but told he would not be charged. Nobody returned to his cell for four days.
The justice department's inspector is now investigating what happened.
Mr Chong, now 25, said he slid a shoelace under the door and screamed to get attention before five or six people found him covered in his faeces in the cell at the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) San Diego headquarters.
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I didn't just sit there quietly. I was kicking the door yelling”
Daniel Chong
After Mr Chong was rescued, he spent five days in hospital recovering from dehydration, kidney failure, cramps and a perforated oesophagus. He also lost 15lb (7kg).
'Horrible accident'
Mr Chong was one of nine people detained in the raid in April 2012. Authorities determined that they would not pursue charges after questioning him.
One of Mr Chong's lawyers said a police officer then put him in the holding cell and told him: "We'll come get you in a minute."
Mr Chong said he thought he was forgotten by mistake.
"It sounded like it was an accident - a really, really bad, horrible accident," he said.
The 5ft by 10 ft (1.5m by 3m) cell had no windows and Mr Chong had no food or water while he was trapped inside for four-and-a-half days.
Mr Chong said he started hallucinating on the third day.
He urinated on a metal bench so he could have something to drink. He also unsuccessfully tried to set off a fire sprinkler to draw attention of the DEA authorities.
"I didn't just sit there quietly. I was kicking the door yelling," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
"I even put some shoestrings, shoelaces through the crack of the door for visual signs. I didn't stay still, no, I was screaming."
At one point, Mr Chong admitted, he thought he was going to die. He broke his eyeglasses by biting into them and tried to carve a "Sorry Mom" farewell message. He managed to finish an "S".
DEA spokeswoman Allison Price confirmed that the $4.1m settlement had been reached, without providing further details, according to the AP.
The incident prompted the head of the DEA to issue a public apology last May, saying he was "deeply troubled" by the incident.
Mr Chong's lawyer said that as a result, the DEA had introduced new policies for detention, including checking cells daily and installing cameras inside them.
Mr Chong, now an economics student at the University of California, says he plans to buy his parents a house.
Anyways, would you drink your own piss to survive?
Of course. Everybody with something to live for or some ambition will do that.
You have to options: 1) be grossed out for a little and SURVIVE 2) don't be grossed out and DIE
Goldman should hire this guy as an associate. This guy can survive anything
Damn he must be happy as hell. I would go through that for $4mm to be honest.
But to be REALLY honest, I would rather work 120 hours / week for a year and earn $70k+bonus. nyahaha
Me knowing it would only be four days long would make it a hell of a lot easier than this guy who thought he had been left to die. And yeah, I'd do it.
I've thought about it too, and am kind of on the fence (even if I knew it was four days). No food for that long sucks, but no water would be nearly unbearable.
It's repulsive and disgusting how the officer left him in there. Was the cop really that stupid, or just the biggest fucking scumbag of all time? such incompetency is frightening. And to answer the question, yes, I would drink the urine, and I would undergo 4.5 days w/o food and water for that amount of $, but I wouldn't do it if I knew there was a good chance no one would find me and I'd die, which is much more realistic to what he went through.
I can either have the worst 4 days of my life and make $4 million or have tiny shitty moments for the next 40 years and make $4 million. Also, this is off the speculation I make $4 million in 40 years. Maybe I would make more or less, I don't know.
I'm taking the jailtime.
Haha, sounds like a classic interview question. Would you rather have $4mm now, or over the span of your career?
Wrong question, obviously time value of money states now :)
I remember being taught that the average human can only go 3 days w/o water, but can last weeks w/o food (burning body fat/muscle of course) - looks like the urine really helped.
if I knew it was 4 days exactly, yeah I might take it. but that's not really putting yourself in his shoes. he didn't know if he was ever going to get released. I can't imagine the terror that set in after 1 or 2 days without water, food, or even human contact.
Man's got a point. It hurts even if I think about it.
I'd probably go fucking crazy and kill some people if that happened to me. $4.1 million would not buy me off.
drinking pee further dehydrates you
you guys are forgetting that half of that $4m probably went to his lawyers...
I think he gets to keep just over $3MM, they mentioned it somewhere else I think.
Even if you only get half, that's pretty good pay out. $2mm/(24*4)= approx $21k per hour.
It's far better than not drinking your own urine in that kind of situation. While you SHOULD NOT drink your urine if you have anything else available, you should if you don't. It replaces nutrients. It tacks on an (at most) extra day or so of life where normally you'd be dead in 3-4 days with no water. Drinking his own urine likely saved his life.
Did drinking his urine harm his body? Yes. Did it keep him alive? Yes.
Have you never seen Man vs Wild? Bear Grylls drinks his own urine.
Yes, but it's more complicated than just "drink your urine and you'll be fine". Google it
that was a joke haha - was going to post a bear grylls piss meme but at work so...
lol, touche
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