Lawsuit: Juvenile detention staffer watched as Ky. girl took "last gasps"
NEW YORK — As Gynnya McMillen coughed and gasped for air, shaking in a seizure while taking her final breaths, a Kentucky juvenile detention youth worker stood outside her isolation cell watching, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the 16-year-old’s estate.
Reginald Windham allegedly told internal state investigators that he walked over to McMillen’s door at 11:39 p.m. on Jan. 11, after he heard coughing. Investigators wrote that he wanted “to check on her to make sure she had not thrown up or was choking or something like that.”
Surveillance video shows Windham staring through a window for 18 seconds, witnessing “her last gasps and dying breaths and final uncontrollable movements and seizure,” according to the lawsuit. He then turned around and walked away, attorneys say.
