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BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The estate of an Idaho inmate who died last year has settled a lawsuit with Canyon County.
Alfred "Jeri" Young, 46, was found unresponsive in a holding cell in April 2014. He never regained consciousness and later died at a hospital.
A friend of Young's and representative of his estate, Herman Donald Tiller Jr., sued the county in October 2015. He argued that jail employees ignored Young's requests for medical care, leading to his death, reported the Idaho Statesman (http://bit.ly/2ahm97j ).
Canyon County agreed in the settlement to pay Young's estate $95,000 and to conduct an audit and training session to figure out what went wrong in the Young case, said Craig Durham, Tiller's attorney.
"This resolution, though not perfect, brings some measure of justice for Jeri (Young)," Durham said Thursday.
County attorney Michael Kane said employees didn't know Young had HIV-related pneumonia and did their best to help him.
"Unfortunately, pneumonia is a ravaging disease for HIV patients," Kane wrote in an email Thursday. He said Young's first symptoms didn't match the classic symptoms of pneumonia, so "the jail medical staff believed they were dealing with other medical issues Alfred (Young) was known to have. For reasons known only to Alfred (Young), he refused to allow the staff access to his personal medical files, so this compounded the problem."
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Information from: Idaho Statesman, http://www.idahostatesman.com
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