A family has filed a lawsuit against the Cibola County Jail in Grants, New Mexico, after an inmate was apparently left for dead by negligent guards. Fellow prisoners desperately tried to help the ailing man, at one point forming a prayer circle and reading Bible versus, but his condition rapidly deteriorated.
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On July 7, 50-year-old Douglas Edminsten, who was in jail while awaiting trail for a misdemeanor charge, began vomiting and defecating blood and complaining of extreme pain. Rather than take him to the hospital, the lawsuit alleges that corrections officers largely ignored Edminsten’s pleas for help—twice taking him to the infirmary for cursory care, before returning him to the general prison population—and a horrifying new video seems to corroborate those fears.
“It made me sick to my stomach,” attorney Glenn Valdez told KOB. “I’m watching somebody die right in front of my eyes.”
In the video (which can be viewed HERE) captured by surveillance cameras, Edminsten is seem writhing on the floor in agony and coming in and out of consciousness as concerned inmates attempt help. After Edminsten fell out of bed, inmates can be seen moving his mattress to the floor in an effort to make him more comfortable. As time passed, they began reading the Bible aloud, while forming a prayer circle.
“We know the inmates and everyone else were trying to get help, but nothing happened,” Valdez said. “He couldn’t call himself or do anything that we take for granted. So without the guards to call, he’s dead.”
Edminsten died about seven hours later, the morning of July 8, and an autopsy revealed he suffered a ruptured blood vessel in his stomach. It is believed that had he received proper care when he first complained of the symptoms around 10pm the night before, he would have had an 80 percent chance of survival.
Because of the pending litigation, country officials have not commented on the tragic incident, but Edminsten’s attorney believes the decision not to help the man was purely monetary.
“I think it was a financial decision,” he said, “that they didn’t want to pay to take him to a hospital.”
On Facebook, Edminsten’s grief-stricken daughter paid tribute to her “wonderful” father.
“You was such a wonderful daddy I love you and I will miss you dearly… R.I.P Douglas Allen Edminsten,” she reportedly wrote alongside a picture of the two of them together.
H/T: Daily Mail