MIAMI _ A Florida woman whose neck and spinal cord were broken in a brutal beating by guards at Lowell Correctional Institution in August has been transferred from the prison infirmary to an outside medical facility, but her lawyer says he doesn't know why she was transferred or where she is.
Cheryl A. Weimar, 51, continues to fight for adequate medical care, and this week filed an emergency court petition asking a federal judge to order the Florida Department of Corrections to move her from the prison's infirmary to a medical facility that is able to address her serious and complicated medical needs.
A judge on Thursday set a hearing for Dec. 17 on the motion. It was the same day the inmate's attorney, Ryan Andrews, received an email notifying him that his client had already been moved without his knowledge.
"They didn't tell us why and they didn't tell us where," Andrews said.
Weimar was left a quadriplegic and suffers from myriad other serious health problems as well as trauma as a result of the attack, which remains under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. After initially being treated at a hospital and having surgery, she was sent back to prison, where she had been incarcerated at the South Florida Women's Reception Center in Ocala.
Two doctors, including one employed by the FDC's own medical contractor, submitted reports indicating Weimar's condition will continue to deteriorate _ and she may even die _ if the department doesn't move her to a facility that can give her around-the-clock care.
The department has admitted it is not able to provide her with the type of care she needs and wants to give her "conditional medical release," which means the state would release her and not have to pay her medical costs, which, according to Andrews, will probably be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"They don't want to release her because they feel bad for her. They want to release her because they want to stop paying for her," Andrews said.
Just last week, Mark Inch, Florida's corrections secretary, acknowledged that years of cutbacks have led to a "death spiral" in the prison system that has yet to be taken seriously by state lawmakers. The crisis, which has prompted inmate uprisings short of major riots, continues to escalate, he said. Inch, a former commander in Army prisons who took over as head of the Florida's prison system in January, once wrote about the nation's prison problem in an op-ed by urging people to "search your heart for mercy."
"Mark Inch can talk all he wants about doing the right thing, but this agency just opted to do the dirty thing and oppose what they know Ms. Weimar needs only because of the costs," Andrews said.
The agency has declined to comment on the case, citing ongoing litigation.
Weimar, serving time on a domestic violence-related charge, has a history of mental and physical disabilities. She has been incarcerated since January 2016. She was on prison work duty at Lowell Correctional Institution on Aug. 21 when officers ordered her to get on her knees and scrub a toilet. Weimar, who has a hip condition, complained that she was in pain and unable to do the task.
Two officers became angry, and Weimar, fearing she would be harmed, declared a medical emergency, which, under FDC policy, requires medical personnel to intervene. The officers became confrontational with Weimar. The confrontation triggered a psychological episode requiring medical intervention, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit she filed against the agency in September.
The officers allegedly slammed Weimar to the ground, beat her with blows to the neck, breaking the neck, the lawsuit says. They then dragged her "like a rag doll" across the compound, as her head bounced, and once outside, they continued the beating in an area not covered by surveillance cameras, the suit says. She was handcuffed throughout the attack, the suit says.
In a 911 call, a distraught prison nurse told a dispatcher an ambulance was needed immediately because Weimar had been unconscious and unresponsive and was barely breathing.
Prison system records show that one of the officers involved in the assault, Keith Turner, has a long history of complaints filed against him by female inmates who said he had threatened them, groped them and tackled them. One inmate said he threatened to kill her, another said he body-slammed her into a chair and another said he handcuffed her outside in 93-degree heat for three hours and refused to give her water. He routinely gave inmates cigarettes in exchange for oral sex and one inmate was rumored to have become pregnant by him, the records showed.
Turner, 34, was nevertheless promoted to lieutenant sometime in 2017. He was reassigned by the agency after the Weimar attack, but was finally fired upon his arrest in November on charges of sexual battery and child molestation. He is accused of abusing a girl from the time she was 6 until she was 16, records show.
The other officer, Ryan Dionne, was arrested in 2013 for "beating" his girlfriend, although the charges were later dropped. He remains employed by the agency.
