Night of inmate’s suicide recounted
Witnesses: Woman begged for cellmate, was denied food
A West Mifflin woman who committed suicide in the Allegheny County Jail last month pleaded not to be placed in a cell alone in the hours before she was found hanging, according to two former inmates who witnessed parts of her final night.
“She was begging for a cellie, because she didn’t want to be alone,” said Courtney Egnatz, 25, of Carnegie, on Monday. “They said no, because she was contaminated” with an unspecified infection.
Jamie Gettings, 33, also was denied food, according to Ms. Egnatz and another former inmate, who asked not to be identified because of possible career repercussions. Ms. Egnatz and the other inmate were in the medical housing unit on April 17, when Ms. Gettings arrived there, and April 18, when a corrections officer found her.
Michael O’Day, an attorney representing Ms. Gettings’ family, said that putting the inmate in a cell by herself “may have contributed greatly to her suicide and death. So that would be concerning, if she was placed in a cell, denied food” and left “essentially fending for herself to go through withdrawal. It sounds like several policies were ignored or blatantly broken.”
A county spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the incident is still under internal investigation.
Former corrections officer Veronica Brown, who was fired following the suicide, said only that she “didn’t have any interactions” with Ms. Gettings, and then
Ms. Gettings’ body.
Ms. Brown was fired effective April 28 and is trying to get her job back via the grievance process, saying she is “being made an example of” by jail management.
Ms. Egnatz and the other former inmate said that all witnesses were encouraged to write down their observations, and they met with Deputy Warden Monica Long.
“She said she’s sorry that we had experienced that, and she can’t imagine what we were going through,” said Ms. Egnatz, who was in jail for probation violations following guilty pleas to disorderly conduct, harassment, recklessly endangering another person, drug possession and fleeing or eluding officers.
Ms. Gettings, a mother of two, pleaded guilty in 2013 and 2014 to drug possession, endangering the welfare of children and retail theft, drawing sentences of probation. Accused by officers of possessing drug paraphernalia following a January traffic stop, she then walked out of a halfway house. After an arrest and a hospital stay, she was jailed around April 13.
A 2011 Post-Gazette analysis of Bureau of Justice Statistics records showed that the Allegheny County Jail had the second-highest suicide rate among the 50 largest jails. The jail subsequently went three years without a suicide before seeing two last year.