Angela Lynn Liggans was taken to the Wagoner County Jail on May 17, 2021, after her arrest on complaints of assault and battery on a police officer, domestic assault, and obstruction.
Liggans was “an insulin- dependent Type 1 diabetic” who required “daily blood sugar monitoring and insulin injections,” her mother, Sharon Dee Dalton, said.
A “Fit for Incarceration” form that was filled out by a jail staffer “indicates that at the time of booking,” Liggans was experiencing a cough, shortness or breath or difficulty breathing, body aches, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, and diarrhea.
“In addition, Ms. Liggans reported a number of medical conditions that needed immediate attention, including COPD, diabetes, ‘unknown heart problem’ and ‘scoliosis,’” according to Dalton.
While in the jail’s booking area, Liggans “grabbed her medication bag, which had not been secured” by the jail detention staff, and “attempted to administer insulin to herself,” Dalton alleged in a lawsuit she filed against Wagoner County Sheriff Chris Elliott and four other individuals.
Wagoner County Sheriff’s detention officers, including Cpl. Blake Bode, “physically took the insulin from Ms.
Liggans” and then “forcibly took Ms. Liggans to the ground, handcuffed her” and “placed her in the jail’s restraint chair, where she was left “for approximately one hour and 10 minutes.”
During that time Liggans “continued to demand her insulin, but none was given” – and wasn’t for at least two days, court records reflect.
During a “medical screening” performed on May 18 by jail “medical assistant” Haley Longshore, Liggans reported “night sweats,” “persistent cough,” “loss of appetite,” “chest pains”, “coughing up blood,” “abnormal weight loss,” and said she was “feeling suicidal.”
Her blood sugar count that day was recorded at 586, a “dangerously elevated” level, and the next day her blood sugar count was recorded as 362. Normal is typically between 90 and 100.
Over the next several days Liggans complained of “severe anxiety and PTSD from being raped and abused,” cried “a lot,” and reported experiencing “bad anxiety and depression,” the lawsuit relates.
She had a pulse rate of 124 and “passed out” on May 28. She “was not seen by a physician nor by a nurse and was not sent to the hospital” that day. However, at least she was given insulin, although it was administered by “non-medical staff.”
The next day Liggans was in “an acute state of psychosis,” hyperventilated in the jail’s “medical” office, suffered “panic attacks” and had “hallucinations.”
On May 30 Bode recorded Liggans’ blood sugar level as 324 and called Dr. Ashley Aldrich, who “advised him to provide Ms. Liggans with five units of ‘Novolog’ insulin.”
Liggans received no insulin on May 31, which “created an emergent situation,” the lawsuit charges. “Yet with deliberate indifference, no physician was called and she was not taken to the hospital.” Liggans “continued to display signs of extreme confusion and even psychosis,” as well as weakness and fatigue and high blood pressure.
Liggans “continued to outwardly display bizarre and psychotic behavior” on June 1, 2021, and later that morning “was so weak she could not get out of bed.” Nevertheless, she was provided with no insulin for a second consecutive day.
Bode “observed” Liggans’ “strange demeanor” on “numerous occasions” June 2, reported she was “unsteady on her feet” and repeatedly fell on the floor of her cell, yet “did nothing to assist Ms. Liggans,” the lawsuit alleges.
About 2:30 p.m. that afternoon, the tower officer asked two officers to check on Liggans “because she had been lying “in the same position for 30 minutes.” The officers said they found her “motionless, unresponsive and ‘completely discolored.’” One officer brought the jail’s automated external defibrillator into the cell where Liggans was lying “and struggled to use it,” but it was “inoperable.”
Emergency medical technicians arrived at 2:39 p.m. June 2, 2021, and pronounced Liggans dead. She was 41 years old.
‘This goes on, not for hours but for days.’
Her mother, Sharon Dalton of Tulsa, filed suit in Muskogee’s Eastern District federal court on April 27, 2023, against:
• Wagoner County Sheriff Chris Elliott.
• Cpl. Blake Bode.
• Haley Longshore, the “medical assistant” who, despite her “lack of training and limited scope of practice,” was hired by Elliott to serve as the jail’s “health administrator.” A “medical assistant” is “not a nurse and is lesser trained that a Registered Nurse or even a Licensed Practical Nurse,” Dalton’s attorney, Dan Smolen of Tulsa, noted in the lawsuit petition.
• Sgt. Jonathan Villavicencio of the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Department.
• Dr. Ashley Aldrich, whose website identifies her as a family medical practitioner in Porter. The lawsuit alleged that she was “responsible, in part, for ensuring Ms. Liggans’ health and well-being” while in the custody of the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office.
The lawsuit contended they should have intervened when it was apparent that Liggans was experiencing a medical emergency.
Smolen asserted that in the days leading up to Liggans’ death she exhibited “obvious signs” of distress. She fell “multiple times,” sweated “profusely,” hallucinated, and was “unaware” of her surroundings.
“This goes on, not for hours but for days,” Smolen told Tulsa KOTV. “It’s all documented by jail staff, and much of it is on surveillance video.”
Liggans exhibited symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis, which occurs when a body cannot produce enough insulin to survive – which the State Medical Examiner ruled was the cause of Liggans’ death.
On Sept. 10, 2024, Dalton dismissed Bode, Longshore, Aldrich and Villavicencio – but not Elliott – from her lawsuit.
A resolution approving “the primary terms” of a $13.5 million settlement of the lawsuit was approved unanimously by the Wagoner County Board of Commissioners on Sept. 23, 2024. However, the commissioners did not approve a Journal Entry of Judgment confirming the agreement until their Nov. 18 meeting, and the document was filed in Oklahoma’s Eastern District federal court the next day.
Smolen said the amount that Wagoner County will pay Angela Liggans’ family was “the largest settlement that has been reached for a civil rights violation in a jail death in Oklahoma’s history.”
The settlement will be paid with either the proceeds from a proposed county sales tax that will be voted on Feb. 11, 2025, or, in the alternative, from an ad valorem tax levy that would be collected from county property owners for 10 years.
In the multimillion- dollar lawsuit settlement, Elliott never admitted liability in his “official capacity” as Sheriff of Wagoner County.
The county commissioners approved an agreement Dec. 16 between Heartland Medical Direction and Wagoner County for a Physician Medical Director.
Southwest Ledger tried to contact the county commissioners last Friday to ask them if this medical professional is for the county jail, but no one answered the call. The commissioners all left the office by 3:30 p.m. that day.