"I'm Going to Die Here"

Lamekia Dockery screamed in agonizing pain through tears streaming down her face. Fellow prisoners tried to help her, but officers, the men and women in uniform who are paid to protect inmates, ignored her pitiful cries and desperate pleas to go to a hospital. Frustrated with her repeated requests, the guards placed Lamekia into solitary confinement, where she died from a sepsis infection caused by an untreated perforated ulcer six days after first asking for medical attention. The mother of five was 36 years old.

Lamekia was serving a one-year sentence at the facility after violating her probation by shoplifting. She arrived on July 26, and almost immediately complained to staff about sharp pains in her abdomen. She made at least 63 complaints of pain and asked to go to a hospital several times.

“She wants to go to the hospital,” an officer named Jessica Newman wrote in an email to her supervisors on July 28. Ms. Newman added: “If you say to send her, the third shift only has three on tonight.”

For several days, Lamekia screamed in agonizing pain. Officer logs reported her vomiting at different times and noted that she was on the floor, saying that she could not breathe.

On July 28, Lamekia filed a complaint against one of the guards she claimed refused to give her time to sit after telling him she was in severe pain. He snatched her off the bed, she said in her complaint and attempted to shackle her to a bed.

I spun Dockery to her stomach and proceeded to shackle her and double lock the shackles,” a corrections officer recorded on July 30. “I ordered her to sit on her bunk and calm down.”

She was placed in solitary confinement and shackled and double-locked to a cell after this incident. The guard alleged that she ‘refused to get up.’ Guards placed her in solitary confinement because she refused to stop banging on the door. Her pain became so noticeable inmates had come together to try to help her. Guards said it caused a disturbance when the inmate bought Tylenol from a vending machine and alerted guards to her situation, although they heard and saw the woman’s condition. Staff offered her Alka-Seltzer, but refused her any further medical attention.

On July 31, Lamekia lay on the floor, barely clinging to life. Officers continued to ignore her. She told them she could not breathe and said, “I’m going to die here.” The officer replied that she could breathe just fine if she was talking.  Lamekia passed away several minutes later.

The above and following photos show a complaint made by Ms. Dockery after she was shackled to a bed.

Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki E. Becker declined to charge the officers with culpability in Lamekia’s death. Becker stated during an interview that the guards were not culpable because “none of them expressed any belief that a stomachache could result in her death.” She also noted that guards do not receive medical training and could not have intervened to assess her condition.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/us/lamekia-dockery-death-jail-prison.html

https://www.change.org/p/donald-j-trump-justice-for-lamekia-dockery