When a woman who had a heart condition, high blood pressure and chest pain was being booked into the Boulder County jail, a nurse on staff decided the woman needed to be transported to an emergency room.
But at the hospital, the 29-year-old Stephanie Anderson reportedly got angry when doctors wanted to give her Ibuprofen instead of narcotics, at one point asking deputies to “just shoot me,” and refusing more treatment.
When she was transported back to the jail, Anderson was placed on suicide watch, and according to one nurse, mental health staff had to clear her before they could check her again. Anderson did leave the emergency room with three prescriptions, but was never given those medicines at the jail. Medical staff that day were starting a new method for delivering prescriptions to inmates.
Anderson was found unresponsive in her cell hours later.
The timeline leading up to Anderson’s death at the Boulder County jail in May is detailed in 157 pages of police reports filed during the investigation and released Friday.
The sheriff’s office investigation closed after an autopsy was completed Wednesday. But officials are now doing an internal investigation into why Anderson was not checked as frequently as she should have been, and why medical staff did not see her when she returned from the hospital.
Anderson’s family has hired an attorney, and sheriff’s officials are not commenting on the case, pending possible litigation.
The family’s attorney, David Lane, said they are continuing to investigate and are still reading through all of the documents provided by officials.
The reports include conflicting witness accounts from inmates. Many claimed to hear a woman screaming and pounding for help before Anderson’s death, but they couldn’t be sure who it was and didn’t know at what time they heard it. Other inmates said they didn’t hear anything.
The reports also detail how jail staff argued with paramedics who responded to the jail over where to pronounce Anderson dead.
The paramedic wanted to pronounce Anderson dead in the jail because she was “not viable” to transport and the hospital would not take her. But jail staff didn’t allow that. One person told investigators that was because doing so would trigger a lockdown of the jail, while another told investigators it may have been to prevent inmates from witnessing the death.
Investigators also found that an officer who transported Anderson to the hospital had written in one note, “drug seeking time thief.” The sentence was removed from a copy of notes turned over to investigators.
“This is a woman who obviously reached out to the sheriff’s department for serious medical help, so it doesn’t really make sense that she would reach out to them for medical help and then turn down their medical help,” Lane said. “We simply don’t have enough information right now to know whether liability exists or not. But the family wants an independent investigation and that’s what we’re doing now.”
