A lawsuit filed in federal court last week accuses Allegheny County Jail staff and the contractor that runs the medical unit there of failing to properly care for a man who had pneumonia and later died at a hospital.
Joseph King Jr., who had been incarcerated starting in 2023, died March 25, 2024, at Allegheny General Hospital after a six-week stay. He was 61.
The complaint, which names as defendants the county, Allegheny Health Network and several unnamed corrections officers and medical staff, includes claims for wrongful death, failure to supervise, corporate medical negligence and denial of access to adequate medical care.
Allegheny Health Network is contracted with the county to provide medical services to those housed at the jail.
A spokesman for the jail Wednesday said he cannot comment on pending litigation.
A message left with AHN was not returned.
According to the lawsuit, filed Jan. 29 by Dashan Malloy, who serves as the administrator of King’s estate, King went to jail Dec. 6, 2023.
Under the policies at the jail, the lawsuit said, an incarcerated person can request health care either verbally or in writing using a sick call request form.
Those forms, it continued, are to be collected daily by health care staff.
Beginning on Feb. 1, 2024, and continuing for six days, King had requested medical care from corrections officers in the jail, the complaint said. However, the officers either didn’t relay King’s request or the health care staff ignored them, it continued.
The lawsuit alleges King complained he was experiencing shortness of breath, chest pain, fatigue, back pain and cold-like symptoms.
By the afternoon of Feb. 5, the lawsuit continued, King’s condition had worsened to the point he could not walk from his housing pod to the drug and alcohol counseling sessions he attended at the jail.
The next morning, the complaint said, King could not walk from his cell to obtain his daily medications.
It was not until 8 p.m. Feb. 7, the lawsuit said, that King was taken to the medical housing unit on a stretcher. He was then sent to Allegheny General Hospital on the North Side, where he was diagnosed with severe pneumonia.
He died March 25 from acute respiratory failure due to pneumonia.
“In any other properly run medical program, Mr. King would have survived,” the lawsuit said.
The complaint, which alleges the jail has a history of inadequate medical care, also notes that, from 2020 to 2024, there were at least 23 reported deaths at the facility, not including those people who had been released to outside hospitals for medical care and died there.
