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Saturday, February 10, 2007

Suit Faults Jail Workers In Teens Death

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posted by Bob at Saturday, February 10, 2007

2 Comments:

Blogger Bob said...

Suit faults jail workers in teen's death
The mother of the 18-year-old alleges that Mille Lacs County jail employees ignored her son's pleas for help, leaving him to die of untreated injuries from a car crash.
By Dan Browning, Star Tribune
Last update: February 08, 2007 – 8:55

Brandon Brown pleaded with Mille Lacs County jail employees for three days to let him see a doctor to treat the head injury sustained when he lost control of his mother's car on Nov. 25, 2005.
By the time the jail staff relented it was too late, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Brown, 18, died of acute bacterial meningitis associated with a frontal skull fracture from the automobile accident, the suit says.

Dawn Brown, 41, of Brainerd filed the lawsuit against the county and several members of the jail staff, saying that they deprived her son of his civil rights by rebuffing his repeated pleas for medical attention.

Brandon Brown had been arrested at his grandmother's house five hours after the accident because he had missed a court date on an unrelated matter.

Jan Kolb, Mille Lacs County Attorney, said in an e-mail that she has not seen the suit, so she could not comment. She said it had would be handled by Jerry Conway, a claims representative at the Minnesota Counties Insurance Trust. Conway was unavailable Thursday.

Calls to the jail were referred to Sheriff Brent Lindgren, who was out of the office and unavailable.

According to the lawsuit, the jail staff noted the large bump on Brown's head and was told about plates in his skull from an earlier accident. Brown's fellow inmates said his eyes were swollen, he barely ate, and slept much of the time when he wasn't moaning or crying out in pain.

The suit says that Brown's guards discussed the fact that he might have a brain injury, and they expressed their concerns to corrections officer Randy Miller and Sgt. Michael Dumonceaux after Brown had been in the jail about 24 hours.

On Sunday morning, Nov. 27, 2005, the suit says that Brown asked Miller to take him to the hospital, but he refused.

Later that night, Dumonceaux called jail nurse Beverly Ann Roxbury at home for advice, the suit says. "Defendant Roxbury stated to Dumonceaux that Brandon probably just wanted a free trip to the ER [emergency room], and she refused Brandon's request for hospital care," it alleges.

At 8:30 a.m. Monday, Brown was found on his cell floor in his underwear, moaning and unresponsive. Roxbury finally examined him at 9:30 a.m., the suit says. Roxbury allegedly told officers that she thought Brown was faking, "and, by her own admission, left Brandon 'to roll around in his cell,' " the suit says.

Unnamed inmates cited in the suit said that a guard repeatedly banged on Brown's cell and told him to shut up, to "stop faking it."

Guard Robert Hoheisel entered Brown's cell about 2 p.m. and yelled at him to get up and prepare for court, the suit says. "Hoheisel grabbed Brandon and lifted him in a feeble attempt to get the dying young man to obey his commands," it says. "As he lifted Brandon off the floor, he saw a large pool of saliva and large quantities of brown mucus coming from Brandon's nose and mouth."

Brown was transported to the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis, where he was declared brain dead at 7 p.m. Monday, three days after his arrest.

The lawsuit filed by the Minneapolis law firm of Robins, Kaplan Miller & Ciresi asks a federal judge to declare that the defendants violated Brown's constitutional rights and seeks unspecified monetary damages.


Dan Browning • 612-673-

5:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Renee over at Edem is always taking about how they abuse people in jail, but as usual, no one will ever listen to her. Thy just try and paint her as not knowing what she is talking about, but gee whiz....the things she complains about keep playing themseves out in one jail after another!

10:02 PM  

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