$1.875 Million Partial Settlement for Colorado Detainee’s Death from Untreated Alcohol Withdrawal; Claims Against Wellpath Pending Bankruptcy
On November 19, 2024, the Board of County Commissioners of Colorado’s El Paso County approved an agreement with the Estate of Daniel James Murray, a detainee who died at the county jail of untreated alcohol withdrawal in July 2022. Surviving claims against the jail’s contracted medical provider, Wellpath LLC, remain pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
Murray, 37, was arrested on June 29, 2022, for violating a protective order. It was a misdemeanor charge, but he was jailed because he was unable to afford bail. “That inability would turn into a death sentence,” declared the complaint filed on his behalf. At his intake screening the next morning, Murray said that he had a pint-a-day alcohol habit and suffered recurring tremors and seizures. In fact, the complaint recalled, he was sweating through visible tremors during the screening interview with a Wellpath nurse, LPN Dianne Hawthrone-Cruz. But she didn’t take his vital signs.
Nor did she refer him to examination by a physician. Instead, she phoned Wellpath Dr. George Santini, who issued a prescription for 150mg in Benzodiazepine pills every day for the three days, tapering then to 100mg daily for another two days. But while the drug is a recommended treatment for withdrawal, the recommended dosage is over 2,000 mg during the first two days, administered intravenously under close medical supervision. As the complaint noted, “There is no indication that Dr. Santini [had] experience treating DTs,” or delirium tremens, “a severe form of alcohol withdrawal” that “has a 35% mortality rate” when untreated.
Sure enough, three days later when Murray’s already-low dosage tapered even lower, Dep. Cody McCormick recorded that he “started to notice an increased change in Murray.” The detainee “began to hallucinate,” and later he “began to rant that he had called his dad earlier (he had not), that his dad was outside his window and that he was down by the river and wanted to say goodbye to his dad before he moved away.”
Hawthrone-Cruz had ordered every-eight-hour checks using the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment Alcohol Scale—Revised (CIWA-Ar), a tool “to measure the severity of patients’ alcohol withdrawal syndrome,” the complaint explained. In fact, though, “simply ordering CIWA-Ar assessments is recklessly inadequate care planning for patients with DTs, who belong in an ICU.” Worse, Wellpath staff failed to adhere even to the every-eight-hour schedule for assessments, often assigning Murray a score without taking his vital signs. As his symptoms worsened, he told them he didn’t want the little bit of medication they offered—so he didn’t get it, and they simply noted that he “refused” it, leaving both the “reason” blank on the jail’s form and the space for “patient signature.”
Early the next morning, on July 4, 2022, McCormick found Murray in a fetal position on his cell floor. He said he was having a seizure. The jailer alerted Wellpath RN Magdalina Beultemann, but she opted to wait on the next scheduled pill dispensation to “try” to get Murray to take his medication. He didn’t live that long. McCormick found him unresponsive at 7:30 a.m., and paramedics declared him dead 43 minutes later.
On behalf of his son’s estate, David Murray filed suit in July 2023 under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, accusing Wellpath and jail staff of violating the detainee’s Fourteenth Amendment rights with their deliberate indifference to his serious medical need. Attorneys representing Sheriff Joseph Roybal and his jailers eventually negotiated the settlement of the claims against them.
Under its terms, the County and its insurer, Gemini Insurance Co., agreed to pay a total of $1.875 million, including $145,796.26 to Murray’s adult child, Shane Pankey; his other adult child, Aubrianna Sickles, took another $35,796.26 in cash and $110,000 in a five-year annuity. Of the remainder, $437,388.78 was paid into an annuity for Sharon Watt, as mother of Murray’s three minor children, Dexter, Owen and Juniper Murray. It also included fees and costs for the Estate’s attorneys from the Bagley Law Firm LLC in Lakewood.
Proceedings against Wellpath have been stayed since the firm filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2024. As PLN reported, Wellpath announced in April 2025 that a deal was reached with junior creditors, which should allow it to exit bankruptcy proceedings. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.31; and May 2025, p.56.] PLN will continue to update developments in both the bankruptcy case and the Estate’s suit. See: Est. of Murray v. Wellpath LLC, USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:23-cv-01847.
Additional sources: KOAA, KRDO
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Related legal case
Est. of Murray v. Wellpath LLC
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:23-cv-01847 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Settlement |