$350,000 Settlement in Immigrant Detainee’s Death Caused by Medical Neglect

A wrongful death lawsuit against Virginia’s Piedmont Regional Jail (PRJ) has been settled for $350,000. The death involved an immigration detainee who died from complications of an untreated bacterial infection.

Guido Newbrough was a German national remanded to PRJ after a federal immigration judge found him removable. PRJ is a local facility that contracts with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house immigration detainees.

Even before Newbrough, a father of three, entered PRJ on February 19, 2008, it was well known for its mistreatment of immigrant detainees; both national and local news organizations had reported on the issue. A June 2007 New York Times article, for example, detailed the circumstances surrounding the 2006 death of detainee Abdeulaye Sall.

Sall had not been given treatment for a serious kidney ailment, even when he was barely able to walk. Sall’s death spurred an ICE report that the medical department at PRJ “is poor and detainee health care is in jeopardy.” ICE was also aware of a 2006 incident where a detainee broke his arm after he was attacked at PRJ, but he was not given care. In 2007, a complaint was lodged in the death of a detainee who received “grossly inadequate medical care” at PRJ.

About eight months after he entered PRJ, Newbrough began to complain to guards, medical staff, and other detainees of severe back pain, stomach aches, frequent urination, dizziness, and fatigue. His requests for medical care were either ignored or denied. Often, guards would respond, “Hey, I only work here. Submit a medical request. There’s nothing else I can do.”

The only medical care given to Newbrough was a prescription of Motrin to alleviate pain. Without medical attention, his symptoms deteriorated and he began to have difficulty eating and moving. His only compassion came from other detainees, who created ice packs from latex gloves filled with ice in a cooler to apply to Newbrough’s back. In mid-November 2008, his pain became so intense that he would sob loud enough at night that other detainees and the guards could hear him.

About that time, he was having trouble walking and was unable to stand at times, spending most of his time lying down. His fellow detainees tried to ease his pain with heat compresses on his back, and they brought his meals to him because he was in too much pain to carry his tray.

Newbrough, faced with the deliberate indifference of guards and medical staff, made a stand before he died. On November 24, in severe pain, he pounded on the door of the pod he resided in and screamed at guards on the other side. By the time six to eight guards entered the pod, Newbrough was sitting at a table in pain. He told the guards he was in severe pain and needed medical attention.

Rather than provide him medical assistance, the guards forced him on the ground, grabbed him by the armpits, and dragged him to a confinement cell. Dr. Homer Venters found after review of Newbrough’s autopsy report that if care had been provided at that point, his “potential for dying from his infection would have been greatly reduced.”

On November 27, Nurse Joanna Scott refused to give Newbrough his medication. Her Patient Note fully detailed the interaction. In sum, he told her he could not walk, and she continued to insist he was refusing to get his medication because he would not walk to get it. She then spoke to Dr. Eric Gordon, who ordered Newbrough taken off medical watch and placed back in population despite him never being examined by a doctor.

That same day, Newbrough was found unresponsive. He died the next day at a hospital of a heart attack and stroke caused by bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the heart valves. The lawsuit claiming wrongful death and Fourteenth Amendment violations was settled on August 29, 2012. See: Newbrough v. Piedmont Regional Jail Authority, USDC (E.D. Va., Case No. 3:10-cv-867.

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