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| Federal Suit Filed for Death at Boot Camp |
| By Forth Worth Star-Telegram |
| Published: 01/13/2003 |
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Attorneys for parents of an 18-year-old who died after falling ill at a Mansfield boot camp filed a federal lawsuit recently against Tarrant County, Texas, and its 19 judges who managed the correctional center. The lawsuit contends that the judges who supervised the Tarrant County Community Correctional Facility failed to ensure that its staff provided proper medical care for Bryan Alexander, 18, of Arlington. Alexander died of pneumonia Jan. 9, 2001, two days after he was taken to a Fort Worth hospital. Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Ann Diamond declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying she had not had time to review the complaint. The boot camp's former nurse, Knyvett Reyes, was sentenced in August to four years of community supervision. She was convicted of negligent homicide in Alexander's death for failing to provide the teen-ager with timely medical care. A $755 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by Alexander's family is pending. In early October, a visiting state district judge denied a motion to add the county's 19 criminal court judges to the case. The federal lawsuit was filed in Wichita Falls. It does not seek specific monetary damages but asks for a jury trial to determine compensation for loss of Alexander's life, medical, funeral and burial expenses and lawyer's fees. 'After Bryan Alexander died, the Tarrant County criminal judges removed the probationers from the boot camp, and soon after the county closed the entire facility,' Fort Worth lawyer Jeff Kobs said in a prepared statement. 'This suit should ensure that if the facility is ever reopened, it is subject to appropriate oversight and supervision and the probationers assigned there receive timely and appropriate medical care.' The judges direct the county's branch of the Texas probation system, which ran the boot camp and residential substance-abuse programs in Mansfield. The facility is owned and leased by Tarrant County. The camp's residential programs closed in summer 2001 because of funding problems. Outpatient substance-abuse programs for probationers are still offered. |
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