Parish jail sued over inmate death

On Sept. 24, 2021, 21-year-old Demerious Jones died while in the custody of the Lincoln Parish Detention Center.

Now the local jail faces a federal lawsuit that alleges LPDC staff allowed Jones to suffer from diabetic ketoacidosis for three days and did not admit him to a hospital or administer insulin until shortly before his death.

A year after her son’s death, Jones’ mother, Franequa Jones, filed a civil suit in the Western District of Louisiana against the LPDC, its governing commission, nurses Danielle Weaver and Jennifer Plunkett, and 15 unidentified Lincoln Parish sheriff’s deputies, claiming their indifference and negligence led to Demerious Jones’ demise.

“Defendants and their employees were deliberately indifferent to Mr. Jones’s serious and lethal medical condition and did not provide or procure the treatment Mr. Jones needed to live,” the suit’s introduction reads.

According to his arrest report, Demerious Jones was booked into the LPDC on Sept. 16, 2021, on three counts of misdemeanor probation violation.

The lawsuit claims Jones, who indicated at booking that he was diabetic, did not receive any medication from Sept. 19 until the day of his death five days later.

Jones allegedly experienced high blood sugar, lethargy, sweating, confusion, extreme thirst, nausea, urinary incontinence and vomiting, escalating over a three- day period until he was eventually found unresponsive on the floor of his solitary confinement cell.

He only received one shot of insulin, administered less than two hours before he died, according to the suit.

Over his final day of life, Jones lacked the strength to move or rise from the floor and was forced repeatedly to lie in pools of his own vomit and urine, including a four-hour stretch leading up to his death during which no one checked on him, the suit claims.

The 42-page complaint provides numerous timestamped images from LPDC security cameras that appear to document Jones’ deteriorating condition.

Plaintiff’s status uncertain

The lawsuit is ongoing, even though it appears Jones’ mother may have died soon after filing the litigation on Sept. 23, 2022.

On Nov. 14, 2022, Weaver and Plunkett filed a response to the complaint, claiming Franequa Jones died on Oct. 6.

An obituary from King’s Funeral Home in Ruston shows a woman by the same name died on that day.

Jones’ attorney, Grant Castillo of The Townsley Law Firm in Lake Charles, confirmed Wednesday that the litigation was ongoing but declined to give further comment when asked if his client was alive.

Weaver and Plunkett’s attorneys, Timothy Richardson and Ronald Bryant out of New Orleans, could not be reached for comment.

Their answer to Jones’ complaint claims the lawsuit should be null and void due to her death.

But action in the case has continued since then.

On Friday U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty filed a case management order that instructed all attorneys in the matter to meet and develop a case management plan on Feb. 10 before potentially moving on to discovery.

And on Tuesday the Lincoln Parish Police Jury, after a private, half-hour executive session, voted to “confirm previous engagement” of Nelson, Zentner, Sartor, and Snellings out of Monroe to represent the jail commission in the suit.

Defendants

By state law, the LPDC is operated by the Lincoln Parish Detention Center Commission. The commission has allowed the sheriff’s office to run the jail through a cooperative endeavor agreement since 2013.

The sheriff’s office itself is not listed as a defendant in the suit.

Current members of the jail commission are Sheriff Stephen Williams, 3rd Judicial District Attorney John Belton, Ruston Police Chief Steve Rogers, Lincoln Parish Police Jury President Richard Durrett, and police juror Sharyon Mayfield.

The lawsuit claims the deputies’ negligence in treating Jones at the LPDC was caused by the “policies, practices and customs” of the commission.

The suit accuses Weaver and Plunkett, who were both licensed practical nurses at the LPDC, of showing deliberate indifference by ignoring Jones’ visible symptoms and high blood glucose readings and failing to administer insulin or transfer him to a physician for treatment.

Warden J.D. Driskill, a Lincoln Parish sheriff’s deputy, said Wednesday that Plunkett is still employed at the LPDC, while Weaver resigned in good standing in 2022 for reasons unrelated to the litigation.

Driskill declined to comment on the allegations. He was assistant warden at the time — the now-retired Jim Tuten was warden.

In a response filed in November, the LPDC and LPDC Commission denied the allegations and listed several defenses, including that “any actions taken by (defendants) were taken by them in good faith and with probable cause, without malice and under laws believed to be constitutional.”

The defendants also claimed “their actions were reasonable, justified, and legally permissible under the circumstances.”

Investigation

Meantime, the results of a probe into Jones’ death by the Northeast Louisiana Sheriff’s Investigative Unit have not been publicly released.

The NLSIU formed in March of 2021 among seven sheriff’s offices in the region, including Lincoln Parish.

It aimed to provide consistent investigation into in-custody deaths and use-of-force cases in each parish.

The agency launched its investigation soon after Jones’ death but before the lawsuit was filed.

Attempts to reach the LPSO for information on that investigation were not returned Wednesday.

More incident details

Signs of Demerious Jones’ ketoacidosis began on Sept. 22, 2021, the lawsuit states.

That morning Jones was examined by Weaver, who checked his blood sugar and recorded it at 259 mg/dl, a dangerously high level, according to the suit.

He was given water and returned to his cell with other inmates.

That night his symptoms worsened, and he was given no treatment.

The next morning, Jones could no longer walk under his own power. Deputies put him in a wheelchair and brought him to a solitary confinement cell, the suit states.

Extreme thirst and altered mental status caused Jones to try to drink water from his toilet. All the while he received no medication or treatment for his condition. His blood sugar was recorded at 324 mg/ dl that morning.

That afternoon, footage shows a deputy checked Jones’ blood sugar but recorded on his medical sheet that he refused to be checked, the suit states.

Despite multiple long periods of lying on the floor in his own vomit over the following night and day, the only care Jones received was an attempt to force him to eat crackers and drink some juice.

Finally, less than two hours before he would be found unresponsive and eventually pronounced dead, Jones’ blood sugar was recorded at 500 mg/ dl, and he received his one and only dose of insulin.

“The defendants’ deliberate indifference to Mr. Jones’s deadly condition caused Mr. Jones to die an excruciating death,” the suit states.