TEXARKANA, Texas — The family of a woman who died after not getting proper medical care for days in a county jail received a $7 million settlement in a lawsuit against the for-profit company that ran the jail.
WFAA highlighted the case of Holly Austin in December 2019, chronicling the Texarkana woman’s last hours inside the Bowie County jail, which at the time, was run by LaSalle Corrections.
Austin’s case was one of several problematic deaths in jails run by LaSalle Corrections featured in a WFAA series called “Jailed to Death.”
Surveillance video obtained as part of a federal lawsuit showed Austin appeared to be blind, unable to walk and crying out in pain in her cell in June 2019. In her last 48 hours, the lawsuit states, jailers repeatedly logged that they conducted state-mandated jail checks, but did not do so.
Lawyers representing LaSalle did not respond to emails seeking comment on the settlement.
“This is among the worst atrocities we’ve ever seen,” said Erik Heipt, an attorney for Austin’s family. “We hope that this result sends a powerful message to every single jail and prison in America that this type of blatant disregard for human life will not be tolerated.
“This outcome should serve as a wake-up call to all private jail and prison operators—not just in Texas, but everywhere: If you’re going to cut corners and put profits over people’s lives, there will be a steep price to pay,” Heipt said.
Holly Austin’s mother, Mary Mathis, and husband, Mike Austin, said they hoped their legal fight would prevent more deaths.
“Holly was a kind, compassionate person with a generous spirit—someone who always wanted to help people in need, even strangers,” they said in a joint statement. “She made the world a better place. What happened to her was inexcusable. No one deserves to be treated the way they treated her."
"We wanted justice. We wanted to show that Holly’s life mattered. And we wanted those responsible for mistreating her to be held accountable. With the help of our attorneys, we believe we achieved those goals."
"While no amount of money could bring our beloved Holly back, this victory will help give us some closure as we move forward. And we hope and pray that it will lead to changes in how our jails treat people in their custody and will save some lives in the future. Because that’s what Holly would’ve wanted.”
The arrest
On April 5, 2019, Holly Austin was booked into the Bi-state Jail. She had violated her probation on a misdemeanor.
On April 8, Holly’s husband, Mike Austin, brought her prescription medications to the jail. One was a medication she needed for a life-threatening auto-immune condition. But records show LaSalle’s medical staff did not give her that medication for several days.
For the rest of April, all of May and into the month of June, Holly Austin’s health declined. According to the family’s lawsuit, Austin filled out medical requests seeking help, but never got what she needed.
In early May, an outside mental health provider visited Austin, and reported she was very sick and had been passing out, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit says LaSalle’s health services administrator told the provider Austin was hypertensive and had been fainting, but that she also told the provider that Austin “pretends to be weak” and “knows how to play the sickly role.”
The last time her husband saw her was June 1. She was brought into the visitation room in a wheelchair. It was a brief visit. She was sick and wanted to lay down, he said.
“She told me ‘Baby, when I get out of here, I’ll be able to get well and we’ll be happy,’” Mike Austin told WFAA.
Final 48 hours
Austin's family was able to obtain footage of her final 48 hours inside the Bowie County jail. There is no audio, but the video depicts Holly Austin's decline.
“There were often occasions where I had tears in my ears watching this woman suffer,” Heipt said.
On that first day, she can seen trying to get someone’s attention by yelling or banging on the wall or the window.
No LaSalle nurses responded and jailers routinely walked by without stopping or looking in, the lawsuit said.
At one point, she caught the attention of a jailer. He opened the food tray slot on her cell door and appeared to put a cup of water in the slot. She reached out in that direction, but appears to be unable to see it.
By then, the footage shows she had been in the cell for “almost nine hours with no food, no water and no medical care, treatment or evaluation,” according to the lawsuit.
At 6 p.m. June 9, a jailer opened the food tray slot and set a food carton and water in the slot. She appeared unable to find the food and water sitting in front of her – something that will happen repeatedly during the time she’s in the cell.
After about 12 hours in the cell, Austin drank her first cup of water. The footage shows a guard guiding it into her hand.
Throughout the night, LaSalle jailers walked by her window without stopping or looking into the cell, the lawsuit said. Heipt said several of them falsely logged on their mobile devices that they had conducted state-mandated visual checks.
Just after midnight on June 10, video shows a jailer opened the door and an inmate handed her the cup of water, guiding it into her hand. He covered his nose with his shirt as he backed out.
It was the second cup of water she’d had in 16 hours, according to the lawsuit.
Her condition continues to visibly deteriorate as the hours go by. The video shows that at times, she lay on the floor, clutching an empty water cup.
At about 8:35 a.m. June 10, a LaSalle nurse came to the cell door. The nurse does not enter the cell. The nurse noted Austin was yelling, “water” and “give me some water.” She wrote she offered Austin water but she “refused(d) to take either,” according to the medical records.
Hours and hours continued to go by without water. She can be seen laying on a urine-soaked mat.
When two inmates come in to clean the cell, one of them held her hand and rubbed her head. The inmates replaced Austin's soiled mat with a new one, but she is not given fresh clothing, a shower or any food and water.
LaSalle’s medical records say she had been “exhibiting abnormal behavior throughout the day” and could be heard yelling, “I’m trapped in here. Let me out.”
Thirty-eight hours after Austin was first put in that medical observation cell, a video shows a nurse entered into the room and took her vitals. Records show it was the first time someone has taken her vitals in more than two weeks. Her heartrate and blood pressure were high, medical records show.
“Instead of getting this woman to a hospital, immediately calling 911, she just left the cell and shut the door and wrote down some progress notes,” Heipt said.
On the morning of June 11, a guard entered the cell, accompanied by LaSalle Assistant Warden Robert Page, the lawsuit said. Austin was not moving and the footage showed the jailer putting his palm in front of his face and motioning up and down as if to say she’s blind, Heipt said.
A few hours later, a nurse and a jailer came into the cell with a wheelchair. They picked up her limp, emaciated body, placed her in a wheelchair and took her to the infirmary.
LaSalle medical records said she was asking, “Where Am I? Why am I here? Water. Water.”
When she was handed a cup of water, she was so weak that she is “unable to grip” it, the medical records state. Her pupils were “nonreactive to light” and she had no “visible veins” for a blood draw, the records state.
An ambulance was called.
“In the 48 hours that she was in that cell, she had no more than three small paper cups of water and a few bites of food,” Heipt said. “She was visibly thin and emaciated.”
Hospital records show Austin was admitted into a Texarkana hospital in critical condition. She was blind and unable to sign her name, the records show.
Doctors would soon find she had meningitis and began treating her for it. Her condition never improved.
For four days, her family had no idea she was fighting for her life in a hospital bed.
On the morning of June 15, Mike Austin again tried to see his wife. This time, he was told she wasn’t in the jail.
“I said, ‘Well, where is she?’” he said.
Jailers told him they could not say. Mike Austin reached out to Bowie County Sheriff James Prince, who said she had been in the hospital for days.
When the family finally did get to see her, she was unresponsive and could not speak.
A few hours later, a LaSalle official showed up asking the family to sign the patient’s name on release paperwork because she was too sick to write.
The paperwork shows Austin was being released for “medical reasons,” per the sheriff. She was formally released at 3:36 p.m. on June 15.
About 10 hours later, with her husband at her bedside, Holly Austin's heart stopped beating and she quit breathing. Doctors revived her and put her on a ventilator.
Tests showed there was no blood flow to the brain which was “consistent with brain death,” hospital records show.
She was pronounced dead at 12:28 p.m. on June 17. She was 47.
Sepsis was listed on her death certificate as Austin’s primary cause of death, with meningitis listed as a secondary cause.
No criminal investigation
Because Holly Austin had been “released” from LaSalle’s custody shortly before she died, her death was not reported to the state, and no criminal investigation was conducted.
On June 28, 2019, WFAA reported Austin's death to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, prompting state regulators to launch their own investigation. The commission is authorized to investigate whether state jail standards have been violated, but cannot conduct criminal investigations.
State jail regulators found that the medical care provided to Austin did not “meet minimum jail standards,” according to records obtained by WFAA.
Jay Eason, LaSalle’s director of operations, told the jail commission during a meeting in November 2019 that the jail’s nursing staffed failed to document that Austin's family brought her medication to the jail. He said that when Austin was moved to the jail annex, the medications did not follow her as they should have.
Eason told commissioners the facility’s nursing staff had been retrained, a medication verification form had been created and a new process started to ensure medications follow an inmate when they are moved to a new facility. He also said he planned to make it clear to the jail’s nursing staff that this is a “serious issue.”
Both Eason and Prince declined to answer WFAA’s questions after the meeting.
Other cases
Austin's death is just the latest connected with the Bowie County jail.
In 2016, 20-year-old Morgan Angerbauer died of a severe lack of insulin on the floor of a cell. Jailers and a nurse ignored her as she screamed for help for hours. A nurse was convicted for her role in Angerbauer’s death.
A year earlier, Michael Sabbie, also a diabetic with asthma and heart problems, repeatedly told nurses he was having trouble breathing. Guards pepper-sprayed him as he screamed, "I can't breathe." Sabbie, 35, was found dead of a heart attack on his cell floor.
When Franklin Greathouse died of a seizure in March 2019 in the Bowie County jail, state investigators again found LaSalle jailers had failed to conduct face-to-face checks, while at the same time, falsely documenting that they had done so.
In other deaths at LaSalle’s jails in Waco and Weatherford, investigations have found jailers falsified records claiming they had conducted state-mandated jail checks.
LaSalle Corrections ended its contract with Bowie County in February 2021. The sheriff’s office now runs the jail.
