Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke answers questions after a news conference in the Milwaukee County Jail. Photo by Michael Sears.
Yet another person has died at the Milwaukee County Jail, the facility overseen by Sheriff David Clarke, an avid Donald Trump supporter.
This time, it was a newborn baby.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a former inmate at the facility claims that a guard laughed off her request for medical attention as she went into labor in her jail cell in July. Thirty-year-old Shadé Swayzer has since filed a notice of claim against the jail alleging that the facility’s staff is responsible for her child’s death, her attorney said Wednesday.
Swayzer, who was about nine months pregnant at the time of the incident, is seeking $8.5 million in damages.
Attorney Jason Jankowski wrote in the notice of claim that his client alerted a corrections officer when her water broke and she began going into labor. The officer allegedly laughed in her face and ignored her calls for help. According to Jankowski, Swayzer gave birth to her child around 4 a.m. but didn’t receive medical attention until almost 6 a.m. The infant was later pronounced dead at an undisclosed time.
A toccording the Milwukee Journal Sentinel, Swayzer’s baby is the fourth person to die at Sheriff Clarke’s jail since April, when 38-year-old inmate Terrill Thomas died of dehydration. His death was ruled a homicide. Following Thomas’ death, a 38-year-old female inmate and a 29-year-old male inmate died in August and October, respectively.
Since the newborn’s death, officials at the Milwaukee County Jail have maintained that Swayzer never told the guards she was going into labor. The company in charge of giving medical care at the facility also claimed that Swayzer’s baby was stillborn. But the former inmate begs to differ.
Swayzer said her baby was “born alive, cried profusely and was breastfed.” The news site reported that an autopsy was performed on the infant, but the results have not been released.
Sheriff Clarke has yet to comment on the matter.
