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| Inmate Deaths Raise Questions |
| By Washington Post |
| Published: 01/02/2006 |
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Thirty-eight year-old inmate Joseph E. McGee at the Howard County, Md., jail had been spitting up blood and complaining of throbbing pains in his chest when he asked jail officials for help. Jail officials had promised to hospitalize him, but police records show that never happened. So McGee took a disposable razor and slashed his left wrist in a frantic bid for serious medical attention, police said. Instead, he was given Motrin and returned to his cell Sept. 3. McGee was found dead the next day. The Howard County jail has been roiled by three deaths this year, an unusually high number for a facility where about 200 inmates are now held and where no one had died in more than six years. The incidents -- including a man who left a suicide note in ketchup alleging he had been denied medication -- have raised questions about the quality of medical care at the jail. The county last week released a review of two of the deaths, both suicides, and concluded that they could not have been prevented. Victoria Goodman, a county spokeswoman said the county would not comment on McGee's death because of anticipated legal action. James E. Crawford Jr., an attorney for the McGee family, said he plans to file a lawsuit seeking about $5 million from the county and state because of inadequate medical treatment. Six days before his death, McGee, a strapping landscaper from Baltimore, was taken to the Howard County jail after being arrested on a theft charge. But the sheriff's cruiser that transported him was involved in an accident in which he sustained a serious chest injury, according to his sister Annie McGee. Police records show that he was examined by jail staff members, who did not find any serious injuries. The infirmary provided him with Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol. But when Annie McGee, 56, went to visit him the afternoon of Sept. 2, she hardly recognized her brother. She said in an interview that his face was gray and that he could barely stand. He kept gurgling blood into a clear plastic cup he held in his hand. "He told me he felt like he was dying," said Annie McGee, who lived with her brother. She recalled him saying: "I feel like my ribs are punctured or cracked. I ask for medical attention and they say: 'You're fine. We're short on staff.' " Police records show that he was admitted to the infirmary and given Tylenol for pain but never hospitalized. After he slit his wrist to get medical care, he was placed on suicide watch, police say. |
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