A Minnesota county has agreed to a $3.4 million settlement with the family of an inmate who spent his final hours crawling around on a jail floor “like he was an animal,” dying from the effects of a hole in his intestine as nurses and jailers ignored his desperate pleas for help after telling them he had ingested a bag of drugs.
The family of Lucas Bellamy, 41, who died in 2022 while being held at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, received a settlement in their federal wrongful death lawsuit.
“This settlement cannot remotely fill the void left by Lucas’ loss,” the family’s attorney, Jeff Storms, told. “However, it is an important step toward accountability and responsibility. Our hope is that Lucas’ senseless death has and will continue to inspire much-needed improvements in correctional care in Minnesota and across the country.”
The lawsuit names three nurses, a jailer, the jail medical contractor Hennepin Healthcare System, Inc., and Hennepin County.
“The death of Mr. Bellamy was a tragedy,” Hennepin County spokeswoman Carolyn Marinan said in a statement. “Our condolences are extended to his family and all those affected by his death. While this litigation has been resolved, we remain committed to treating all people in our care with dignity and respect.”
A media representative for Hennepin Healthcare said in a statement to, “We join our community in expressing our heartfelt condolences to the family on the loss of their loved one. We remain steadfast in our commitment to providing high-quality care and fostering a safe and healing environment for all.”
The complaint details the allegations made following Bellamy’s July 18, 2022 arrest on charges of fleeing police in a suspected stolen vehicle and possessing brass knuckles.
At the jail, he admitted to having ingested a drug bag. He was transported to an emergency room at 5:53 a.m. Bellamy was sedated and monitored for several hours before being released from jail at 9 a.m. with instructions to return to the emergency department if he showed “any new concerning symptoms,” according to court documents.
According to court documents, he did develop such symptoms while in jail, but no one took him to the emergency room.
Lucas fell ill shortly after midnight on July 20, 2022, and began vomiting in his general population bunk. He was then transferred from the general population to a protective custody unit, with one inmate per cell.
Jail staff did not record why Lucas was transferred to a new cell, but later recorded that the move was “possibly due to bad [withdrawals],” according to the lawsuit.
His condition deteriorated as he refused to eat and refused to leave his cell for the allotted one-hour break.
At 9:40 p.m., a nurse noticed him complaining about stomach pain. He was in such severe pain that it took him 45 seconds to crawl out of his cell on his hands and knees after a jailer opened the door, according to court documents.
He couldn’t reach a table without collapsing face first to the ground. Neither the nurse nor the jailer helped him get up.
Bellamy told the nurse that he was unable to eat.
“I need to go to the hospital,” he told her, according to court records. “I need IV liquid.”
He told her he was experiencing stomach pains.
The nurse informed Bellamy that she “was not sending [him] to the hospital tonight” and instructed him to contact jail medical staff if his symptoms worsened, according to the lawsuit.
At 1:30 a.m. on July 21, 2022, Bellamy used the intercom to summon a guard, screaming, “Help me, help me.”
A guard discovered him lying in the fetal position on the floor.
“I asked how he was feeling, and [Lucas] stated, ‘My stomach hurts really bad, help me,'” said the guard, who called the medical room.
A different nurse and guard visited Bellamy’s cell. The nurse observed that he was in severe pain, kneeling with his head on the floor, and crying.
“I need to go to the hospital, please help me,” he told them, according to court documents.
He crawled out of his cell again on his hands and knees, but neither the nurse nor the jailer assisted him. Despite this, the nurse noted he was “[a]ble to stand up, walk outside his cell sit up and sit still for vitals signs taking [sic],” the lawsuit said, adding that it was a “gross mischaracterization of Lucas’s physical abilities.”
“Lucas could never stand fully erect, and instead walked to the table hunched over grasping at his stomach,” the suit claimed.
Later, Bellamy asked to see a nurse again, complaining of a burning stomach.
One nurse wrote in Bellamy’s chart that he had “started to whine” and suggested he was faking, court documents said.
The nurse took no vitals and gave Bellamy Maalox through the slot in the cell door.
At 8:40 a.m. on July 21, 2022, another nurse and guard visited Bellamy’s cell for standard medication rounds. Bellamy crawled out of his cell again on his hands and knees. The jailer, the document noted, “showed no concern for Lucas’s well-being.”
During the interaction, the jailer at times “could be seen smiling and laughing while interacting with other individuals as Lucas suffered on the floor,” court documents said.
Surveillance footage captured Bellamy in the final throes just before noon on July 21, 2022. Thirty minutes later, Lucas was found face down in his cell. He could not be resuscitated and was declared dead at 1:17 p.m.
His cause of death was peritonitis due to a duodenal perforation — an infection from a hole in his small intestine. Court documents noted this is an easily treatable problem when addressed timely.
“Instead of receiving the medical treatment that was ordered and Lucas desperately needed, Hennepin Healthcare and County employees left Lucas to crawl around on the jail floor like he was subhuman, like he was an animal, while he slowly and painfully died from the effects of a hole in his intestine. Lucas could have been easily saved with proper treatment. Instead, he endured a real-life nightmare and died on July 21, 2022,” the lawsuit said.
Bellamy’s father, Louis Bellamy, who founded a theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, told The Associated Press that what he witnessed happened to his son was something he could not even imagine unfolding in a tragic play.
“[I] could not have built anything more callous, more disrespectful to … humanity, human existence than what I witnessed on that tape,” he said.
