A county in Indiana has paid $7.25 million to the estate of a jail inmate with schizophrenia who di3d after being locked alone, nak3d, dehydrated & malnourished in a filthy padded jail cell for nearly 3 weeks while jailers watched him decline & only intervened after it was too late. Lawyers for Joshua McLemore, 29, said the settlement by Jackson County is believed to be the biggest payout for a jailhouse d3ath in Indiana. McLemore died on Aug. 10, 2021, after spending 20 days in “Padded Cell 7” at Indiana’s Jackson County Jail. He di3d after his arrest for pulling a nurse’s hair at a medical center emergency room during an “acute mental health crisis,”. Attorneys said the jail had no mental health staff & the nurse who worked there 3 or 4 days a week barely interacted with him & ignored the obvious risks of his condition. Litigation continues against the contractor, Advanced Correctional Healthcare, Inc, a private firm that runs health care at the facility. A report by Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Chalfant agreed with Indiana State Police that McLemore most likely di3d due to a prolonged lack of attention by Jackson County Jail staff but found jail employees committed no crimes. After McLemore’s arrest, he was placed in a small, windowless, padded isolation cell, lit 24 hours a day by fluorescent lights. He remained confined there, nak3d, alone & in a constant state of psychosis for the next 20 days. The only times he got to leave his cell “were when guards would forcibly remove him & strap him into restraint devices so they could put him under a shower & clean his cell,”. He regularly spilled food on the floor & tore up the styrofoam boxes & paper bags his meals were delivered in, court documents said. The door to a bathroom attached to his cell was locked nearly the entire time he was there. The prosecutor’s report said the door is locked for safety reasons & unlocked at the inmate’s request, but McLemore did not ever ask for access to the restroom or shower, the prosecutor wrote. The lawsuit claims he urinated & def3cated on the floor & food & trash were often mixed with urine or fec3s. The prosecutor said he frequently urinated in his cell but noted that in reviewing jail video, he did not see him ever defecate in his cell. The jail staff cleaned the cell 3 times during his 20-day incarceration, but within hours of it being cleaned, it was in disarray again. When he entered the jail, he weighed 197.8 pounds & appeared fit & robust. While inside, he ate & drank very little & lost almost 45 pounds in less than 3 weeks. He was under constant watch & a real-time video feed showed his movements, but jailers “did nothing to intervene or secure needed medical or mental health care until it was too late”. When he was finally sent to the hospital, his condition was so dire that the hospital did not have the resources to treat him. He was airlifted to a larger hospital in Cincinnati, where he di3d 2 days later. The autopsy listed his cause of d3ath as “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink with altered mental status due to untreated schizophrenia.” The manner of death was listed as natural. #truecrime #crimetiktok #crimejunkie #truestory #truecrimetiktok #crimetok #crime #truecrimeaddict #truecrimecommunity - @crimeatyourfingertips