At 10:44 a.m. on July 31, 2018, in a moment captured on surveillance video, Diana Sanchez gave birth to her son alone in her cell at the Denver County Jail without medical supervision or treatment, despite repeatedly telling the jail’s staff that she was having contractions, according to a federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Colorado on Wednesday, The Washington Post reports. The suit alleges that instead of “ensuring that Ms. Sanchez was able to give birth in a safe and sanitary medical setting,” nurses and deputies “callously made her labor alone for hours,” forcing her to endure a “horrific experience.”
The suit, which names the city and county of Denver, Denver Health Medical Center and six individuals as defendants, comes months after an internal investigation conducted by the Denver Sheriff Department cleared its deputies of wrongdoing — a result that left Sanchez’s attorney, Mari Newman, “profoundly disappointed.” A spokeswoman with the sheriff department told The Post in a statement Wednesday that last year’s investigation concluded deputies “took the appropriate actions under the circumstances and followed the relevant policies and procedures.” In a follow-up statement, she added, “To make sure nothing like this happens again, the Denver Sheriff Department has changed its policies to ensure that pregnant inmates who are in any stage of labor are now transported immediately to the hospital.”