$11 Million Paid to Estate of Mentally Ill Illinois Jail Detainee Who Lost 60 Pounds During 85-Day Incarceration
On February 13, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved an $11 million settlement agreement between DuPage County and the Estate of Reyneda Aguilar-Hurtado, a detainee who died in the County jail in Wheaton in June 2023.
A mother of two teens, Aguilar-Hurtado, 50, was arrested in March 2023 on a misdemeanor battery charge after getting into a scuffle at a grocery store and kicking another customer. Upon intake into the jail, she was found to have a history of mental illness, including psychosis and schizophrenia. That was sufficient for County Probation and Court Services Dr. Tara Fullmer to declare her unfit for trial.
But Aguilar-Hurtado was neither treated nor released. Instead, like too many mentally ill people detained in American jails, she spent the next 85 days—two and a half months—in a fruitless wait for transfer to a mental health facility. Meanwhile, according to the complaint later filed on her behalf, “[h]er mental and physical condition grew progressively worse,” as she “routinely refused food and water” and lost 60 pounds. Guards “repeatedly” found her cell littered with vomit and human waste. By the time she died, she was so weak and confused that she had to be transported by wheelchair.
On May 6, 2023, over five weeks after she was found unfit to stand trial, Aguilar-Hurtado was finally given a psychiatric evaluation. Dr. James Corcoran noted that she was “a poor communicator, extremely disheveled, had defecated mid cell, displayed in appropriate bizarre smiling, and had food bags everywhere,” as the complaint recalled. He determined that she was suffering from a psychotic disorder. But the detainee refused psychotropic medication. No follow-up treatment occurred, either, since she refused to see Dr. Corcoran when he returned three weeks after his first visit.
Meanwhile, guards several times found Aguilar-Hurtado bloodied and alerted medical staffers, who assured them that “no medical intervention [was] necessary.” Dr. Alma Martija saw the detainee on May 30, 2023, noting her psychosis, weight loss and “tendency to self-harm.” But she ordered no follow-up care except weekly weight checks. Dr. Martija didn’t see the detainee again—no physician did—until Aguilar-Hurtado was found unresponsive in her cell and pronounced dead on June 12, 2023.
An autopsy determined that she died of “multisystem organ failure” attributed to “failure to thrive due to psychotic disorder.” The pathologist noted that her body arrived at the hospital with “physical signs of acute illness for days prior without significant medical intervention,” adding that he detected “[a]cute esophageal necrosis”—a sign of severe dehydration—along with “self-neglect and medical neglect contributed significantly to her death.”
With the aid of attorneys Michael C. Mead and Nicholas J. Faklis of Faklis, Tallis & Mead, P.C. in Chicago, Cristal Moreno Aguilar filed suit as Independent Administrator of her mother’s Estate. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, she accused the County and Sheriff James Mendrick, as well as his jail guards and medical staff, of deliberate indifference to Aguilar-Hurtado’s serious medical need, in violation of her Fourteenth Amendment rights. The suit also made state-law claims for negligence, medical negligence and wrongful death.
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which included $13,564.45 in costs and $3,666,666.67 in fees for Plaintiffs’ attorneys. The balance was split evenly between Cristal Aguilar and her younger brother, a minor who was Aguilar-Hurtado’s other child. See: Aguilar v. DuPage Cty., USDC (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:23-cv-04547.
Remarkably, Mead, the Estate’s attorney, told the Chicago Tribune that “[w]e believe that DuPage County has recognized the systemic failures and biases that allowed this tragedy to occur,” pointing to unspecified “changes to training, administrative oversight, and policies and procedures for urgently transferring detainees to hospitals.”
Additional source: Chicago Tribune
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Related legal case
Aguilar v. DuPage Cty
| Year | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Cite | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois |
| Level | District Court |