Female inmate given $480,000 after she lost her baby as police stopped for Starbucks en route to hospital

A former inmate will be given $480,000 after she lost her baby when jail staff stopped at a Starbucks en route to the hospital after her water broke.

Court records reveal that Sandra Quinones was six months pregnant when she was serving a 70-day sentence at the Central Jail in Orange County, California.

When her water broke in March 2016, she pressed the call button in her cell repeatedly. Two hours passed without a response.

When county staff eventually came to her aid, they stopped at a Starbucks on the way to the hospital, Quinones’s lawyer claimed in a federal lawsuit. Court records state that she lost the child.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to pay Quinones almost half a million dollars to settle a civil rights lawsuit which argued that she had been denied medical care, that she had received negligent treatment, in addition to suffering other violations, The New York Times reported.

According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Quinones was arrested in Buena Park, southeast of Los Angeles, for possession of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for sales.

Orange County initially argued that the federal lawsuit be thrown out because the statute of limitations had passed. The case was dismissed in October 2020 after a district judge agreed. That ruling was reversed in December by an appeals court, meaning the case went back to the lower level of the justice system.

Quinones’s lawyer Richard Herman wrote in the legal filing lodged in April 2020, which was subsequently amended, that the county staffers chose not to call an ambulance.

The attorney alleged that the unnamed employees transported Quinones, who was 28 years old at the time, to the hospital on a “nonemergency basis”.

The legal filing states that Quinones was bleeding in the back of the van as she was in labour while the employees stopped at Starbucks. It wasn’t specified in the suit how long the stop was.

Court records don’t reveal how Quinones lost her child.

The lawsuit adds that training policies for county staff to deal with the medical needs of inmates were not fit for the purpose and that Quinones is experiencing “severe and extreme” post-traumatic stress disorder and depression following the incident.

The court documents state that she’s a resident of Orange County but that she’s been homeless since the incident, living on the streets and in the custody of the county.

Mr Herman stated in the lawsuit that her “homelessness stems from her inability to function and take care of her affairs after the incident as a result of the severe emotional harm in combination with her mental impairments”.

In a statement to The Independent, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said, “more than 6 years ago, the undisputed facts show that two deputies who stopped for coffee failed to keep safe a pregnant woman entrusted in their care. As a mother of two sons, my heart aches thinking about the inability to control access to timely healthcare for your baby as well as the emotional pain and trauma caused”.

“The settlement will never erase the pain, but at least it will compensate the mom for some of her pain, suffering, and emotional distress,” she added.