Sixty-year-old Sweet Dagza was booked into Lubbock County Jail in Lubbock, Texas, on the afternoon of June 6, 2021. A custodial death report was filed late by the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Department stating that she was found unresponsive in her single cell 17 days later. EMS personnel pronounced Ms. Dagza dead at the jail that day, which was June 23, 2021, and the cause of death is unknown.

When jail inspection reports are conducted in Texas county jails by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS), instances of medical neglect are only detected in certain circumstances, such as when restraints are used. If an inmate in his or her cell requests or is in obvious need of medical attention and is denied help, no part of the jail inspection system seems to detect denial of medical care. Yet, on a consistent basis, inmate medical care is the topic that, by far, receives the most complaints, according to TCJS reports. Facts about medical neglect don’t usually don’t emerge until an inmate has died and an investigation ensues.

Examples of medical neglect follow below and in this continuing series.

An Inmate Outside Texas Dies From Alleged Denial of Medical Care

A young woman in a state outside Texas was exhibiting medical distress as she was being arrested by drug enforcement unit agents. She couldn’t stop gagging, and her family now claims that she clearly needed to go to a hospital for a medical examination. Instead, however, she was booked into a detention center. A nurse was in the booking area for the purpose of performing medical screenings. The inmate was not seen until that evening, however, when a nurse was distributing prescription medications.

Learn more in the next installment of this series.

It is never intended on this website to make implications of wrongdoing having occurred on the part of people or institutions. Posts are intended as a resource of benefit to prisoners currently or formerly held in a county jail in Texas.

–Guest Contributor