Family of Ky. girl who died in juvenile custody files lawsuit

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. -- The family of a teenager who died in a Kentucky detention center is suing jail and state officials, saying the girl was restrained with a martial arts technique​ for refusing to remove her hoodie and then left to die in her cell.

Kentucky’s Department of Juvenile Justice said in a statement Wednesday that medical examiners determined Gynnya McMillen died in her sleep of natural causes, without showing any signs of distress that would have prompted medical attention.

WAVE-TV reports that the family’s lawsuit filed Wednesday accuses the Lincoln Village Regional Juvenile Detention Center staff of falsifying records to cover up their failure to monitor the 16-year-old. Some of those records claim McMillen declined breakfast and a snack, and was non-compliant, when in fact she had already been dead for hours.

The lawsuit also claims that Reginald Windham, a former supervisor at Lincoln Village, heard McMillen coughing in the hours after she arrived at the center, and alleges that Windham watched the girl’s “last gasps and dying breaths” from outside her cell. The family alleges that no one tried to resuscitate her.

Windham was later fired during an investigation into McMillen’s death.