MANSFIELD — The second death of an inmate in less than a month following a “medical emergency” at the Richland County Jail is under investigation, according to Richland County Sheriff’s Capt. Chris Blunk.
Rebecca Westfield, 54, of Mansfield, was pronounced dead May 7 at 5:25 a.m. at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital, according to Tom Stortz, an investigator with the Richland County Coroner’s Office.
Westfield was taken to the hospital after a corrections officer checking on her “noticed something wasn’t right,” at 5 a.m., said Blunk, the jail administrator.
Westfield’s death followed the death of Candice Crose, 32, also of Mansfield, who was pronounced dead at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital on April 14, according to Bob Ball, the coroner’s office chief investigator.
An autopsy was done on Crose in Montgomery County, though results are not yet public.
Stortz said Westfield’s body was also taken to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office for an autopsy, including toxicology studies.
Both women had drug issues in their past, according to court records. Crose was convicted in 2020 for conveyance of drugs into a government facility.
Westfield was charged in April with possession of a fentanyl-related compound, according to Richland County Common Pleas Court records. Westfield had been in the county jail since May 2 after her bond was revoked, according to Blunk.
The jail administrator said Westfield was being held in a solo cell in the book-in area after refusing to participate in the book-in process.
“When she came in, she had some medical concerns. I believe she was refusing to answer the officers’ questions and medical staff questions when she came in,” Blunk said.
The RCSO changed medical services providers the jail in March, a switch initiated April 1 after county commissioners approved a one-year, $700,590 contract with Southern Health Partners.
That contract for the 266-bed facility maintains services at largely the same level as available under Advanced Correctional Healthcare, which had been the provider for the last several years, including 24/7 nursing coverage.
Blunk said it’s too early to evaluate the new provider.
“It’s pretty early in the process. I will say I have seen SHP get more involved (with inmates) than the previous health provider,” he said.
Blunk said his corrections officers and staff rely on the medical provider to make medical decisions.
“We have a medical team that’s in there 24/7 and we rely on them to provide the necessary medical treatment — and we rely on them to make those medical decisions because my staff is not trained to provide medical treatment,” Blunk said.
“We’re trained to observe signs and symptoms and notify the medical staff and we rely on that medical team to make those critical medical decisions when it comes to medical treatment of inmates.”
An email was sent on Wednesday morning to Southern Health Partners seeking comment on the services it provides to the inmates and jail staff.
In January, Sheriff Steve Sheldon spoke to county commissioners about the potential for “enhanced” medical services in the new jail medical services contract, including the addition of a second LPN at the jail 24/7 (including holidays) and a “very comprehensive (drug/alcohol) treatment program” for inmates.
“We have people that come in that have mental health issues. We have people that are coming in that have drug and alcohol issues. We’ve learned that, especially through the drug issues, they might be in jail for four or five days before they go through a severe withdrawal.
“We need to have plan in action to be able to deal with that,” Sheldon told commissioners.
However, once proposals were received from potential providers, those enhancements carried price tags of between $1.1 and $1.8 million annually, Blunk told commissioners in March.
On Wednesday, Sheldon repeated his concerns for the medical condition of inmates when they arrive at the jail.
“I’m speaking in generalities now, but a lot of these people that come into our jail have really bad health problems. They haven’t taken care of themselves for 40, 50 or 60 years, a lot of them.
“Because of the way they lived their lives … the damage they have done (to themselves) for 40 years, we are not going to be able to correct in five days, or six days, or 10 days or 30 days,” the sheriff said.
Blunk said both recent deaths remain under investigation, including the review of video, and that information gleaned could help his jail staff implement changes.
“We are very early in the process,” Blunk said. “You have to review hours, maybe even sometimes hundreds of hours of video, before we really know what we can look at as far as corrective issues or anything of that nature.
“So it’s really very early to really put all of our chips into one hat on on what to look at in terms of correcting.”
While acknowledging the recent deaths, Sheldon and Blunk also pointed to the number of times corrections staff have saved inmate lives that don’t receive public attention, including the use of NARCAN, AEDs and CPR.
“We’ve had so many lives saved by our staff at the jail. They should be recognized for the good things they’ve done,” Sheldon said, estimating the number of people saved at more than 15 or 20 in the last three years.
“Not just (from) drugs, but mainly drugs,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of successes, too.”
Maj. Joe Masi said jail staff are doing all they can to prevent drugs from being brought into the facility.
“The officers on the street pat them down. They are patted down in booking. We search their clothing. We are not allowed to do (body) cavity searches and we have to have reasonable suspicion to even do a strip search,” Masi said.
“We have a body scanner, but it will not automatically see drugs. We struggle with it. When we catch people (trying to smuggle in drugs), we charge them with conveyance. We warn them before booking that if they have drugs, they need to turn it over or they will be charged. It’s rare anyone ever does,” he said.
“We have researched other facilities to see what they do and to find whatever (else) is out there. We can’t find anything else we can do (in terms of drug detection). I wish there was another way,” he said.
Blunk said he spoke to Southern Health Partners after Westfield’s death and is working to implement a program offered by the provider called “Overwatch.”
“It’s a watch we can put on inmates that will let us know their temperature, pulse rate and oxygen level. We are going to be moving forward with that.
“We actually just did a demo with them. It’s more costly, but I am doing to use this to benefit the inmates. It may take some time to get to that point,” he said.
Blunk also said he has applied for a new grant that would pay $300,000 annually for three years that would allow the jail to implement more of the enhanced medical services the sheriff discussed with commissioners in January.
