Student gets millions for five-day jail cell ordeal

A student left in a police cell for five days has been awarded €2.9m compensation.

Daniel Chong – a 24-year-old engineering student at the University of California – accepted the pay out after he was wrongly held during a huge drugs operation in San Diego, California, and then forgotten about in a holding cell resulting in him having hallucinations and going "completely insane".

He said: “It was an accident, a really bad, horrible accident.

“I had to recycle my own urine. I had to do what I had to do to survive. I was completely insane. It’s impossible to describe hallucinations like these.”

Daniel lost 15lb in weight as a result of his ordeal and initially vowed to sue the US government for €14m.

Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the Drugs Enforcement Agency, said: “Each suspect was interviewed in separate interview rooms and frequently moved around between rooms and cells.

“The individual in question was accidentally left in one of the cells.”