A Washoe County judge has dismissed the lawsuit filed by the family of slain Reno woman Hailey Nieto, bringing an end to the civil case that accused a jail communication company of failing to intervene when inmate Zachary Tonnochy sent violent threats before her death.
The lawsuit, filed in November 2024, claimed that Smart Communications — the company managing inmate messaging for the Washoe County jail — should have flagged, intercepted, and reported a series of disturbing messages Tonnochy sent while in custody in 2022.
According to the family, Tonnochy threatened to kill Nieto, sex-traffic her and her young daughters, and even counted down the days until he could harm her and the rest of the family. The complaint argued that the system was designed to detect such threats and that failures in oversight allowed those communications to reach Nieto despite clear danger…