South Carolina Woman Died Of Dehydration, Blood Clots In Jail Cell She Shouldn't Have Been In To Begin With
Hosanna Dinkins was 26.
Hosanna Dinkins should be turning 27 today.
She’s not, because she died in a cell in Sumter-Lee Detention Center in Sumter, South Carolina, last August. A preliminary autopsy released last week determined that her cause of death was blood clots, dehydration and malnutrition.
"In layman's terms, basically what it was, because of the dehydration, it caused an ulcer in her small intestines," Sumter coroner Robbie Baker said. "It could have been days where she wasn't drinking anything, obviously, but she was definitely dehydrated."
Dinkins wasn’t there because she had actually been charged with anything, mind you. Rather, she had been held there for two months while she waited on a bed in a mental health facility where she could be treated for her schizophrenia.
Hosanna’s father Hosea Dinkins had petitioned a judge to put her in a mental health facility after she tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. But because there were no available beds in any mental health facilities in the state, Hosanna Dinkins was sent to jail on a probate order on June 28, 2023. She was only supposed to be there, at most, for 13 days, but she remained there, in a cell by herself, until she died on August 23.
One of the most enraging details about her death is that her father kept calling the jail and begging to be able to see her or talk to her but was refused. When asked how she was doing, he was told “better than you expect” and that was just days before she was found unresponsive in her cell.
"Over the course of 21 days while she was housed here in the Sumter County Detention Center, she had lost over 60 pounds," Marvin Pendarvis, a state legislator and the lawyer representing the Dinkins family, said. "One, Hosanna should not have been in this detention center. And two, she should not have died. And so there's a lot of things that went wrong along the way. And part of this litigation process will be trying to uncover what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and to make sure we get justice for the Dinkins family."
It’s not clear if Hosanna Dinkins suffered from dehydration because she did not have regular access to clean water, a disturbingly common issue in jails and prisons across the United States. It’s not precisely clear why she was eating so little that she suffered from malnutrition, either. But you know what? Whatever the reason, it’s physically obvious when someone is dehydrated to that point and no one is going to not notice someone going from 180 to 120 in the span of three weeks. So either they weren’t even looking at her or they were and they didn’t care.
It will likely be quite a while before we know, because the Sheriff’s Office sure as hell ain’t talking.
News19 contacted the Sumter County Sheriff's Office, which helps run the jail, to find out its protocol to ensure people in jail receive food and water. We asked about whether inmates' eating or drinking is monitored and were told the department "will be making no other comments regarding the death of Dinkins."
The department's spokesperson said it will "not engage in any other media inquiries."
You know, I know you’re not supposed to talk about a lawsuit, but there has to be a less callous way of putting that.
This is not the first time something like this has happened at the Sumter-Lee Detention Center. In 2013, the Center had to pay $425,000 to a former diabetic inmate because the nurses at the jail — despite acknowledging that her blood glucose levels were high — refused to give her insulin until she hit 600, which is as far as the meter goes, as well as the point at which one is likely to enter a diabetic coma. She ended up having to spend 48 days in a hospital and now walks with a limp.
There are piles of other lawsuits accusing the jail of ignoring serious medical conditions, though they’ve invariably been brought by inmates representing themselves pro se and quickly dismissed. Who knows how some of them might have turned out if they’d had representation.
Nothing is going to bring Hosanna back, but I sure do hope that her family gets enough in the settlement to gently encourage the staff at Sumter County Detention Center to check to make sure that none of their inmates are dying.
PREVIOUSLY:
I'm reminded of a family member who went to the doctor because she kept losing weight. The doctor told her to just be happy she was losing weight and sent her home.
She had cancer.
This is America.
This same damn thing happens in the detention center in my county in Upstate New York. It is a national sport, make conditions in prisons so hellish just...for fun really. And who cares about the inmates? Then people are all "Surprised Pikachu" face when they get high recidivism rates.