DE attorney to file wrongful death lawsuit
The Department of Corrections has a wrongful death suit coming it’s way. Delaware attorney Stephen Hampton is filing the complaint.
He finally got his hands on the autopsy report for Ronald Shoup. He’s the inmate who died while incarcerated in 2014. The release comes following the end of the Department of Justice’s investigation into his death.
Hampton says, “You can tell from the autopsy report that this was not a onetime incident it was something involving multiple people and probably multiple incidents.”
Shoup was being held at the Sussex Correctional Institution on a series of traffic violations because he couldn’t post bail.
We’re told he had a history with alcohol and was suffering from withdrawal and hallucinations. He was moved to the infirmary because of those symptoms.
On the night of August 26th, the medical staff “requested assistance from DOC security staff to forcibly administer emergency medications due to the offender’s severe agitation and risk of injuring himself and the medical staff.” Several hours later, Shoup was dead.
The autopsy report goes into detail about the blunt force injuries he suffered that night like hemorrhages on his back and chest, and multiple bilateral rib fractures. It calls the manner of death a “homicide.”
Hampton goes on, “In this case, this wasn’t accidental.”
The Department of Justice began investigating the incident the day of Shoup’s death, that case is now closed. Hampton says Shoup’s family was told there wouldn’t be any charges filed in the incident.
He continues, “It’s a tragedy. It was completely preventable. I guess I feel and probably the family feels too, that it’s hard to understand how it could be justice if nobody gets reprimanded, no one gets fired, nothing happens to anybody.”
Hampton says the goal of the lawsuit is to explore what actually happened the night of Shoup’s death. He replies, “The man wasn’t beaten to death with nobody seeing anything. Somebody saw something.”
The Department of Corrections told 47 ABC on Monday that they do not comment on potential or pending litigation. The Department of Justice says they’re preparing a report describing the outcome of their investigation that they intend to publicly release soon.
