Another inmate is found dead, and now a family is taking legal action for, what they are calling, an epidemic of death in Florida prisons.
Florida department of corrections has been under fire for some time now, facing scrutiny on how inmates are being treated, and their handlings with whistleblowers.
Now, after another inmate and mother of four was found dead on Wednesday in a Marion County state prison, a local law firm is saying that the Florida Department of Corrections must be held accountable for its recent pattern of inmate abuse and death.
According to the lawyers, 36 year old Latandra Ellington had written letters to her family in the weeks before her death, telling them she was afraid for her life.
An autopsy ordered by Tallahassee law firm, Parks & Crump LLC, showed hemorrhaging in the abdomen, likely caused by kicking or punching.
Crump says the family has received no answers from the prison on how Ellington died.
The firm has sent a letter to the United States Department of Justice, asking for a federal investigation of Florida’s Department of Corrections, after a number of recent questionable deaths inside the state prison system.
Ben Crump, the attorney for Latandra Ellington's family says this is becoming an epidemic. He said "all of these killings, this epidemic of killings, in the department of corrections in the last four years or so is not happening by happenstance."
Ellington was sent to the Lowell Correctional Institute in Ocala after taking part in a tax scam.
She had been sentenced to one year and ten months in prison, and had spent just under one year at the facility.
More than 80 inmate deaths are being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
We reported, six officers already fired for inmate brutality.
Sergeant Christopher Christmas, Sergeant William Finch, and Sergeant Robert Miller, Sergeant James Perkins, Sergeant Dalton Riley, and Captain James Kirkland were all charged and dismissed for reportedly being involved in brutality of an inmate under Florida DOC’s new "Zero-Tolerance Policy".
