WELD COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — Amy Cross lay shirtless on the floor, had seizure-like activity, and foamed at the mouth as her fingers turned blue in a Weld County jail cell last year, according to a new lawsuit filed Tuesday.
A lawsuit claims the 41-year-old mother of three was suffering from a methamphetamine overdose and displayed symptoms for seven hours before an ambulance was called but by then, she was already dead.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, seeks compensatory damages to Cross’s family for physical, mental and emotional distress. Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams, who is in charge of the jail operation, Weld County Commissioners and Turn Key Health Clinics, LLC are named in the suit. Turn Key Health contracts to provide medical services to inmates at the Weld County Jail, according to the lawsuit.
Cross was booked on drug-related charges, but smuggled a bag of methamphetamine inside her body into the jail undetected, according to the lawsuit. An autopsy found the bag had broken open inside of her.
As Cross exhibited progressive signs of methamphetamine toxicity over the next seven hours, the lawsuit claims the defendants “completely abdicated their role as gatekeepers and
recklessly did not hospitalize Ms. Cross.”
“This medical team had decided earlier on in the day, she’s ‘acting a fool,’ those were their words, ‘she’s acting a fool,’ we’re not gonna send her out,” said the family’s attorney Erica Grossman. “So no matter how sick she became, no matter how many times deputies even said ‘this woman is really sick,’ no matter how much she was basically dying in front of them, she didn’t end up going to the hospital.”
Turn Key signed a $4.5 million contract with Weld County that started in December 2019, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the company had already been named as a defendant in “at least a hundred” lawsuits alleging inadequate medical care for inmates.
A spokesperson for Weld County told FOX31, “We do not comment on pending or ongoing litigation cases.”
FOX31 reached out to Turn Key Health, based in Oklahoma City, but we have not heard back at the time of this publication.
“The fact that you can just die like that in front of so many people, and just the amount of pain you must be in, just excruciating pain and suffering as you know you’re dying and no one is helping. It’s inhumane and shouldn’t happen in our society,” Grossman said.
According to the contract between Turn Key Health and Weld County, the contract expires on December 31, 2022, but can be extended annually for two additional one-year periods, if both parties agree.