OAKLAND — In her young life, Makyla Brown has already survived more than most.
As a teen, she was in foster care. By 18, an Oakland police officer knocked her teeth loose and cut her lip badly with a Billy club. By 19, she was jailed with a pending murder case. Then her body started to give out.
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Brown suffered the first of many seizures in Santa Rita Jail when she was 20. During her incarceration, she’d passed out in her cell dozens of times, lost the use of her legs and repeatedly begged to go to a hospital.
Brown’s three-year murder case ended with a bittersweet twist. After two years in jail and her health rapidly deteriorating, the now 23-year-old’s attorney a judge to release her before things got even worse. The case went on for another nine months, then one day last January, prosecutors decided that they couldn’t prove it after all.
Brown, who faced life in prison if convicted, was free to go. But while the legal problem is over, her health struggles continue.
“(My legs) could be okay one day and then another day they’ll feel weaker,” Brown said in a phone interview this week. “By the third day, I’m down.”
Her saga is the latest in a series of controversies over medical treatment of inmates at Dublin’s Santa Rita Jail.
Last year, Alameda County prosecutors charged a dozen sheriff’s deputies and medical staffers with allowing a man to die slowly and face down on his jail cell’s mattress. It was the most recent example of alleged mistreatment of inmates’ mental health that had led to a federal oversight at the Dublin jail.
Brown says she suffered so many seizures that jail staff issued her a helmet so she wouldn’t continue to crack teeth or bust her head open when she hit the concrete floor. She recounted instances where she’d awake from unconsciousness, dazed and sometimes bleeding, with deputies and nurses surrounding her.
One time, she woke up paralyzed from the waist down and unable to urinate. A deputy, she said, distracted her while another jammed a needle into her leg to make sure she couldn’t feel pain. Finally, she suffered a spinal injury, infections and inflammation that was never fully diagnosed, but led to paralysis, according to court records. She says jail staff accused her of “faking” seizures.
“When I first got incarcerated I told them that I had syncopathy and that I be having seizures frequently,” Brown said. “They never put it down on file.”
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the jail, didn’t respond to a request for comment beyond a spokesman stating last week he would look into the allegations.
While Brown’s health worsened, in court her lawyer was mounting a self-defense case.
Brown — who used the nickname “Trenches” — had been accused of fatally shooting 20-year-old Fresno resident Emone Fuller in the early morning of Aug. 27, 2021, near the East Oakland intersection of International Boulevard and 20th Avenue. An eyewitness told police that Brown pulled a pistol and shot Fuller, who was charging at Brown from behind.
Brown’s public defender never denied that Brown killed Fuller, but argued Fuller had all but guaranteed she would kill Brown if given the opportunity. Prosecutors had countered that Fuller was more likely getting ready to hit Brown in the face with pepper spray she’d allegedly borrowed from a woman who was also standing on the corner.
But last January, prosecutors made an about-face. They informed a county judge that they were tossing the case due to “insufficient evidence,” according to court records.
Brown had suffered repeated hardships before her incarceration. She was listed as a missing person out of San Leandro in 2019, as a 16-year-old. In 2020, just 10 days after her 18th birthday, she allegedly joined in the looting of a Fruitvale District shoe store in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the nationwide protests and rioting that followed.
Oakland police acting-Lt. Richard Vierra struck her in the face with a baton “in an apparent attempt to stop Brown from running away,” city officials wrote in a report.
The city later determined Vierra had violated policy and approved a $400,000 settlement for Brown, who suffered a chip tooth and a three-centimeter cut that required multiple stitches. By the time the settlement was approved, Brown was 19 and in jail for the murder case. She suffered her first seizure about a month later.
The problems between Fuller and Brown began in early 2021, after Brown started dating Fuller’s ex-boyfriend, who had allegedly kidnapped Fuller’s infant child in a prior incident, police said.
Five months after Fuller’s death, Brown was arrested and charged. The case against her largely hinged on the word of one of Fuller’s friends who was there.
“I seen (Fuller) was walking up to Trenches, that’s when I stopped and I was trying to figure out what was going on. And I seen she was about to fight her and Trenches basically turned around and shot her,” Fuller’s friend testified at a January 2024 preliminary hearing.
But the woman also testified that one of Fuller’s final statements was, “I’m going to f— this b—- up,” referring to Brown. Authorities say the woman also described to them how Fuller had attempted to run Brown over in a white SUV earlier that year.
Police theorized that Fuller or her friends were behind another attempt on Brown’s life, when Brown’s car was shot up on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, heading toward Marin County, by someone in a white SUV. Fuller was never officially considered a suspect, but Brown’s attorney said in a court filing that Brown never got a chance to name her as one.
While Brown was talking to San Rafael police, a 26-year-old man — who would go on to get arrested on suspicion of human trafficking last December in Vallejo — allegedly came up, told her to cease her statement and took her away.
Police reportedly uncovered text messages where Fuller told Brown, “I know where you live. You gone (sic) be right next to yo dead a– brother,” and “go to any blade b—-. I’m on you.” The word “blade” generally refers to a high-prostitution area, like where Brown shot Fuller.
With the case behind her, Brown has left the area and found gainful employment. She takes each day as they come, she said, and hasn’t forgotten how her Santa Rita Jail cellmate would keep track of her medicine schedule or help paramedics when Brown had a seizure.
“I just gotta learn how to deal with the cards I was dealt. Sometimes, God shows us things for a reason and things happen for a reason,” Brown said. “God doesn’t send people into battle for things they can’t handle. He only sends his strongest soldiers.”