By C1 Staff
ERWIN — In response to a suit that claimed a Tennessee county jail had no medical staff when an inmate died, the sheriff said that there has always been a nurse on call for the facility.
The Johnson City Press reports that Sheriff Mike Hensley of the Unicoi County Sheriff’s Department said that the jail has never been without a nurse either on its payroll or under contract. He did acknowledge that there wasn’t a nurse on duty at the time when Nathan Silvers died.
Silvers died within a few hours of his arrest after he had injected four melted tablets of Xanax into his system. A police officer found him passed out behind the wheel of his vehicle in front of a convenience store April 10.
The suit, filed by Miranda Silvers, alleges that Silvers told the arresting officer about the drugs in his system and that the officer then told jail staff. The suit states that this information presented a serious medical need that should have had staff seeking medical attention for Silvers.
The county denies the officer relayed the information. They also denied that jailers failed to properly monitor Silvers and that a nurse employed by the jail resigned her position a week before the incident.