Lawsuit: Cover-up took place after jailed teen died from overdose
Today’s post was shared by The Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group and comes from www.abqjournal.com
| SANTA FE — Alleging that an untrained Santa Fe County jail guard engaged in a cover-up and took no action to have a teenager who’d overdosed on heroin checked after she was released from a local hospital while still “out of it,” the girl’s estate has sued the county, guards, the hospital and the hospital doctor who allowed her release.The lawsuit was filed Friday on behalf of Desiree Gonzales, who was sent to the jail after being released by the local hospital following her overdose the night of May 7.
“Because she took drugs and had an outstanding warrant for a probation violation, she was treated as a prisoner who deserved to be pushed out of the hospital as fast as possible, thrown into a cell and left to die,” says the lawsuit. The lawsuit says a guard initially told hospital personnel that 17-year-old Gonzales was not checked for 2½ hours at the jail before she was found unresponsive with no pulse and not breathing. But the guard later changed his story on orders from a supervisor, saying Gonzales was checked every 15 minutes at the jail, including by waking her up, the lawsuit alleges. The suit quotes medical records showing that hospital personnel reported that the purported every-15-minutes checks on Gonzales at the jail were “a change from his (the guard’s) original story” in the emergency room, the lawsuit says. The alleged cover-up also “includes records made after the fact for… |
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