Family Sues Philly Jail After Diabetic Father of Three Dies from Repeated Denial of Insulin
South Philly Father Died a Tragic, Preventable Death After Jail’s Failure to Provide Basic Health Care
Contact:
Connease Warren, Abolitionist Law Center, 713-304-8990, connease@alcenter.org
PHILADELPHIA – A South Philly family is suing the Philadelphia Dept. of Prisons (PDP) and prison healthcare corporation YesCare for causing the death of their father, Louis Jung Jr. while in pretrial detention on November 6, 2023.
Mr. Jung, a 50-year-old with Type 1 diabetes, suffered a senseless and preventable death from diabetic ketoacidosis after PDP and YesCare staff failed to provide him with necessary medical care. The last days of Mr. Jung’s life while at PDP were harrowing, marked by failures to provide him access to glucose monitoring, call for emergency care when his blood glucose levels were dangerously high, send him to the hospital or place him in the infirmary to properly monitor his condition, and the complete failure to administer insulin for six full days, resulting in his death.
“My father had diabetes and simply needed insulin. I cannot wrap my head around how inhumanely they treated him. How they allowed him to lie there and suffer and die,” said James Jung.
Throughout the period of Mr. Jung’s incarceration, which began in December 2021, PDP and YesCare routinely failed to provide Mr. Jung necessary insulin, glucose checks, or an individualized treatment plan, as required by American Diabetes Association guidelines. As a consequence, Mr. Jung suffered numerous medical emergencies, including multiple hospitalizations due to unregulated glucose levels. Despite this 22-month history in PDP, defendants never took necessary interventions to protect Mr. Jung’s health and allowed him to die a preventable death from a treatable illness after he returned from Norristown State Hospital.
At least 62 people have died while in the custody of the PDP within the last five years, a high death rate for a jail system that has in recent years been the target of a federal class action lawsuit, population increases despite a shortage of hundreds of officers, and countless reports of unchecked violence, inadequate healthcare, and solitary confinement conditions. In the last ten years, at least three people have died from ketoacidosis. In 2014, Frank SanLorenzo died of diabetic ketoacidosis at the age of 32. This was followed by 21-year-old Rashaan Chambers in 2021. Despite the knowledge and awareness of the seriousness of the problem, as well as the specific risk to Mr. Jung himself, Louis Jung’s incarceration at PDP led to the same tragic consequences just two years later.
“Nearly 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court warned that failure to provide an incarcerated patient with medical care ‘may actually produce physical torture or a lingering death,’ and that is exactly what happened to Louis Jung,” said Bret Grote, Legal Director of the Abolitionist Law Center. “His children are bringing this lawsuit to seek answers and force change so that other families will not experience the pain of losing a loved one to the Philadelphia Department of Prisons.”
Mr. Jung’s family is preparing for the first anniversary of his death and their second holiday season without him while coming to terms with the fact that he is no longer with them. He is survived by his three children, the two administrators of his estate and their older brother who is completely physically disabled and dependent on assistance to meet his daily needs.
“Imagine being locked up and the people who are hired and get paid to provide for health care fail to provide life sustaining medication,” said Jacob Jung. “My father has three sons and a granddaughter he never got to meet. Now he will never get the chance to see anything we accomplished because the prison killed him. He was our father.”
Jacob and James Jung v. City of Philadelphia was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs are represented by Bret Grote, Nia Holston, Rupalee Rashatwar, and Margo Hu of the Abolitionist Law Center.