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| Family sues over inmate's cancer death |
| By The New Mexican |
| Published: 07/04/2005 |
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The family of a man who died while in custody at the Santa Fe County (N.M.) Jail in 2003 filed a wrongful-death suit against jail and county officials in District Court last Thursday. The suit alleges jail health workers were negligent in responding to complaints of back pain that turned out to be cancer. Jimmy Villanueva, 55, complained on several occasions to health workers at the jail about back problems that grew steadily worse between August 2002 and January 2003, according to the suit filed by Santa Fe lawyer Mark Donatelli on behalf of Villanueva's sister, Priscilla Romero, and mother, Ophelia Padilla. Villanueva was serving one year in the jail for a probation violation, Romero said last Thursday. She said she did not remember what the original charges were. During that time, the suit alleges, health workers chose to prescribe pain medications to Villanueva, who began to lose control of his body and ability to walk, instead of actively seeking a diagnosis. As a result, the suit alleges, his condition worsened to the point that he was unable to walk and get his medications at the jail, the suit says. "When a person is sick, they're sick," Romero said. "It's inhumane what they did to my brother." On Jan. 10, 2003, the suit alleges, Villanueva was taken to St. Vincent Regional Medical Center after his condition deteriorated to the point that he was crawling on the floor. A doctor ordered tests on two locations on Villanueva's spine and "found lesions in both places and assessed them as metastatic cancer," the suit says. Doctors began radiation treatment on Villanueva, but he died two weeks later. Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano, who had just taken office in January 2003 when Villanueva died, said he had not yet received a copy of the suit. He also said the county's impending takeover of jail operations from a private manager scheduled for October marks an important step in addressing health-related problems at the jail. Defendants in the suit include: Solano; former Sheriff Raymond Sisneros; Management and Training Corp., which runs the jail but has announced its intentions to pull out of its county contract; the county commissioners and American Physicians Assurance Corp.; and Physicians Network Association, which provided health services at the jail. |
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