The parents of a 16-year-old girl who died while in custody at a northwest Georgia youth detention center in 2022 have filed a federal lawsuit alleging she was denied lifesaving care.
Melanie Hogan Sluder and Ricky Shawn Curtis filed the complaint Tuesday in the Northern District of Georgia’s Rome Division seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial over their daughter’s August 2022 death.
Alexis Sluder, a Gilmer High School student and beauty pageant participant, had been booked into the Elbert Shaw Regional Youth Detention Center in Dalton following her arrest on drug possession and theft charges. While there, she suffered a medical emergency from drugs taken earlier in the day. However, she wasn’t driven to a hospital and died about seven hours after she was booked into the facility.
“As a result of the defendants’ actions, Alexis Sluder experienced pain and suffering, including but not limited to a very long and painful death in which she convulsed, overheated, breathed heavily, writhed in pain and begged for help,” the lawsuit states.
The GBI announced last year that a Whitfield County grand jury had indicted the former director and nurse at the center, along with three former guards, all of whom were named as defendants in the lawsuit and accused of violating Sluder’s constitutional rights. They were all fired and face child cruelty charges, officials said.
Others named as defendants in the lawsuit included Gilmer County and a county sheriff’s office sergeant who took Sluder to the youth detention facility following her arrest. The Gilmer sheriff’s office did not immediately comment Wednesday.
According to the lawsuit, Sluder ran away and was arrested Aug. 26, 2022, in Blairsville by a Union County deputy on charges of methamphetamine possession, possession of drug related objects and theft by shoplifting. While Sluder was being taken from the Union jail to the Whitfield facility, Sgt. Sharon Ellis told several youth detention center employees that she found the drug on the teenager but failed to note it on a delivering officer form, the complaint states.
According to the lawsuit, the form states that “if a child seems intoxicated, under the influence of drugs, severely injured, or any indication of self harm possibility, you must immediately contact onsite mental health or medical. If they are not onsite, you must contact the director or assistant director on site if no one listed is at the facility at the time of entrance.”
After Sluder answered questions that appeared to match those conditions, the five former employees — Sgt. Maveis Brooks, cadet Russell Ballard, Officer Rebecka Phillips, nurse Monica Hedrick and Director David McKinney — determined she should be taken to the hospital, but Ellis declined because she had already released Sluder into the custody of the state of Georgia and no longer had jurisdiction, the lawsuit alleges. The former employees then declined to call 911 or take her to a medical facility, according to the complaint.
Due to her medical and mental health concerns, Sluder was then placed into an observation room with constant video surveillance. While Sluder was there, the lawsuit claims Ballard watched the medical emergency from the video control room. As the teen lay on the ground in pain, the lawsuit states Sluder grabbed Phillips’ ankles but the officer “stood over her, watched and did nothing to help her.” With Brooks and Phillips within earshot, Sluder then looked at the camera and appeared to say: “Someone help me. I took something,” according to the lawsuit.
“Alexis experienced a painful overdose lasting over four hours, during which she convulsed, writhed in pain, breathed heavily, sweated profusely and cried to the camera surveilling her,” the complaint added.
According to the lawsuit, the five former detention employees discussed the situation but stated there were not enough officers on staff to take her to a hospital “without violating a policy set forth by the State of Georgia, the Department of Justice, and the RYDC.” They then asked Ellis, who refused to take her, citing a Gilmer County policy that prevented staff from transporting someone to a hospital while in the custody of another government entity.
“There is no policy set forth by the state of Georgia, the Department of Justice and the Dalton RYDC preventing state employees from calling 911 or another emergency medical service to transport juveniles to the hospital in a medical emergency,” the lawsuit states.
A Department of Juvenile Justice spokesperson said they were aware a lawsuit had been filed, “however, it is our standard practice not to comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit states the six defendants allowed Sluder to suffer the medical emergency. At 3:12 a.m., about six hours after Sluder was booked into the facility, Phillips mentioned over the radio that she “was not breathing properly.” Ballard called 911, and he and Brooks performed CPR on Sluder, who was pronounced dead at 4:26 a.m.
Her autopsy was conducted by the GBI, which determined the cause of death as drug toxicity from methamphetamine and amphetamine.
The lawsuit alleges the defendants were aware of Sluder’s medical risks and prior drug use but did not “continuously monitor (her) health, safety and well-being” or “respond reasonably” after she became distressed and asked for help. Brooks, of Calhoun, Ballard, from Chatsworth, and Phillips, of Chatsworth, were all charged with two counts of first-degree cruelty to children and one count of second-degree cruelty to children. McKinney, of Rome, and Hedrick, of Ringgold, were each charged with one count of second-degree cruelty to children.
“The complaint seeks to redress Alexis’ wrongful death and hold accountable those who had a responsibility to help her, depriving her of basic and necessary medical care in violation of her Constitutional rights. Their objectively unreasonable and deliberately indifferent decisions led to not only the death of Alexis Sluder, but the extreme pain that she endured in the final hours of her life,” the family’s attorneys wrote in a statement.
According to her obituary, Sluder spent much of her time on the softball field and in beauty pageants, where she always won the “prettiest smile.” In May, Gilmer High posthumously gradated her during a ceremony at the school, where a seat was reserved for her. She hoped to join the military.
“I didn’t get to watch her pick out her first car, go to the prom or graduate this past year with her friends. Things she had been looking forward to,” her mother said in the statement. “I am lost without her, and not a minute goes by that I don’t think about her and what she would be doing.”
