$3.4 Million Settlement for Minnesota Jail Death Called “Real-Life Nightmare”
When Lucas John Bellamy, 41, was booked into jail in Minnesota’s Hennepin County on July 18, 2022, he informed staff that he had swallowed a bag of drugs shortly before his arrest. He was taken to a hospital, where staff determined he was stable. He was then sent back to jail with instructions to return to the emergency room if he had “any new concerning symptoms.”
Bellamy asked jailers for Narcan, which is used to treat opioid overdoses, but his request was denied. Two days after arriving at the jail, he experienced extreme abdominal pain and vomiting. Screaming for help, he was moved into a one-man protective custody cell. According to a lawsuit later filed on his behalf, he could walk only doubled-over due to the pain, and he had to “crawl around on the jail floor like he was subhuman, like he was an animal, while he slowly and painfully died from the effects of a hole in his intestine.”
Nurse Kay P. Willis saw Bellamy on July 20, 2022, and ordered Maalox for him. She did not state in her contact notes that he “was in such severe and obvious pain that it took him 45 seconds to crawl out of his cell on his hands and knees,” as the complaint later alleged. Willis refused to send him to a hospital. Although she noted he had high blood pressure, she did not give him antihypertensive medication.
The next day, nurse Michelle D. Diaz saw Bellamy; he was still in severe pain, crawling on the floor and asking to be sent to the hospital. His blood pressure was even more elevated, but Diaz took no action except to provide more Maalox. She did not record in her notes that Bellamy could not walk upright and had collapsed on the floor, as the complaint recalled.
On July 22, 2022, nurse Roselene M. Omweri saw Bellamy in the morning while making regular medication rounds. She observed him crawling in pain and gave him Maalox and Tylenol; but she did not chart his vital signs and failed to note that he couldn’t walk upright. Left “in agonizing pain with an obviously deteriorating and serious medical condition,” he was found dead in his cell later that day. At no time while incarcerated was Bellamy ever seen by a doctor.
Bellamy’s father, as the family’s trustee, filed suit in federal court for the District of Minnesota, stating that “Lucas spent the last day of his life detained at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, desperately begging nurses and jail guards to see a doctor.” His ordeal was described as “a real-life nightmare.” A medical examiner eventually determined that the death was caused by peritonitis due to a duodenal perforation; in other words, he “died from an infection because there was a hole in his small intestine.”
The complaint raised a claim of deliberate indifference to Bellamy’s serious medical needs, in violation of his civil rights as a pretrial detainee under the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as state law claims for wrongful death or, in the alternative, injury caused by the Defendants’ negligent acts and omissions.
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, notifying the district court on November 11, 2024, that the County agreed to pay a global settlement of $3.4 million. Of that amount, $1.36 million went to fees for Minneapolis attorneys representing the family from Storms Dworak LLC, who received $1,088,000, and Oleisky & Oleisky, P.A., who received 272,000. The remainder was paid to Bellamy’s family, including annuities to benefit his minor child, “G.B.” See: Bellamy v. Omweri, USDC (D. Minn.), Case No. 0:24-cv-00170.
The same month that the settlement was reached, the state Department of Corrections ordered the Hennepin County Jail to address overcrowding and safety issues and reduce its population by a third. Officials were instructed to deal with guards’ failure “to conduct timely well-being checks” in connection with the deaths of seven detainees during the previous two years. Sheriff Dewanna Witt challenged that on November 27, 2024, but County commissioners voted six days later to start shipping out detainees to other jails in the state, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2025, p.26.]
Additional source: KTSP News
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