OAKLAND — In her young life, Makyla Brown has already survived more than most.

As a teen, she lived in foster care. By 18, an Oakland police officer had knocked her teeth loose and badly cut her lip with a Billy club. By 19, she was jailed on a murder charge. Then her body started to give out.

Brown suffered the first of many seizures in Santa Rita Jail when she was 20. While incarcerated, she said she’d passed out in her cell dozens of times, lost the use of her legs and repeatedly begged to go to a hospital.

The murder case against Brown ended with a bittersweet twist. After two years in jail, her health rapidly deteriorating, the now 23-year-old’s attorney asked a judge to release her before her health failed further. The case went on for another nine months, then one day last January, prosecutors decided that they couldn’t prove the charges after all.

Brown, who faced life in prison if convicted, was free to go. But while the legal problems were over, her health struggles continued.

My legs “could be OK 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 care while incarcerated is the latest in a series of controversies over the 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 either dependent abuse or falsifying reports after they allegedly allowed a man to die slowly, face down, on his jail cell’s mattress. It was the most recent example of alleged mistreatment of inmates with mental health issues that had led to federal oversight at the Dublin jail.

Brown said she had so many seizures in her cell that jail staff provided a helmet so she wouldn’t continue to crack her teeth or gash her head when she hit the concrete floor. She recounted in an interview 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 sustained 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 on Brown’s allegations, although a spokesman stated last week that he would review them.

While Brown’s health worsened, her lawyer was mounting a self-defense case in court.

Brown — who used the nickname “Trenches” at the time — 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, according to court records.

Brown’s public defender never denied that Brown killed Fuller, but argued Fuller would have killed Brown if given the opportunity. Prosecutors had countered that Fuller was more likely getting ready to hit Brown in the face with pepper spray that she’d allegedly borrowed from a woman who was also standing on the corner.

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.

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 was accused of joining in the looting of a Fruitvale District shoe store in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing nationwide protests and rioting.

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 police department policy and approved a $400,000 settlement for Brown, who sustained a chipped tooth and a three-centimeter cut that required multiple stitches. By the time the settlement was approved, Brown was 19 and in jail on the murder charge. She had her first seizure about a month later.

The problems between Fuller and Brown began in early 2021, after Brown started dating Fuller’s former boyfriend, who had been accused of kidnapping Fuller’s infant child in a prior incident, police said in court documents.

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 said she witnessed the events.

“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 (expletive) this (expletive) up,” referring to Brown. Authorities say the woman also described to them how Fuller had attempted earlier that year to run Brown over in a white SUV.

Police theorized that Fuller or her friends were behind another attempt on Brown’s life when Brown’s car was shot on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, heading toward Marin County, by someone in a white SUV. Fuller was never officially considered a suspect, according to Oakland police, 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 be arrested on suspicion of human trafficking last December in Vallejo, allegedly came up, told her to cease her statement and took her away, according to court records.

Police reportedly uncovered text messages where Fuller told Brown, “I know where you live. You gone (sic) be right next to yo dead (expletive) brother,” and “go to any blade (expletive). 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 a job. She takes each day as it comes, she said, and hasn’t forgotten how her Santa Rita Jail cellmate would keep track of her medicine schedule or help paramedics when she 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.”