CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: Autopsy Scheduled For Kenneth Keith Kallenbach
An autopsy will be performed tomorrow on Kenneth Keith Kallenbach, a 39-year-old comedian who died Thursday after contracting pneumonia at the Delaware County jail, where he was awaiting trial. Since 2005, at least eight people have died at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility, the state’s only privately run jail. Several of those deaths resulted in lawsuits by family members who say the facility did not provide adequate medical care or proper supervision for inmates. GEO Group operates prisons around the country, and its operations in Texas have been sharply criticized over poor conditions and the treatment of some of its prisoners. At the Delaware County facility last year, a woman who suffered from a thyroid condition died at the jail where she had been held for six weeks. Family members said she did not receive her medication during her incarceration. “There is an awful lot of deliberate indifference to the medical needs” in the prison, said Harold I. Goodman, a lawyer currently suing the company that operates the jail on behalf of the woman’s family. GEO, based in Florida, also has been under fire in Texas, where it operates more than a dozen correctional facilities. Last fall, the Texas Youth Commission abruptly canceled its $8 million contract with GEO after investigators found unsanitary living conditions at its juvenile facility. Several of the teens said they were sexually assaulted by a guard who was a convicted sex offender, according to lawsuits. GEO lost its contract at an adult facility in west Texas last year after an inspector reportedly characterized the prison as “the worst correctional facility I have ever visited.” [via INQUIRER]
PREVIOUSLY: The Wrongful Life And Death Of Kenneth Keith Kallenbach
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KILLADELPHIA: Man Shot In The Head, Another Shot Four Times In The Back
Two men were critically wounded in separate Philadelphia shootings overnight, police said this morning. A 31-year-old man was shot once in the head shortly before 10 p.m. in the 4500 block of Uber Street in the city’s Logan section, police said. He was transported by police to Albert Einstein Medical Center and listed in critical condition. About 2 a.m. today, another 31-year-old man was shot four times in the back in the 3000 block of Memphis Street in Port Richmond, police said. The man was able to drive himself to Temple University Hospital, where he was reported in critical condition, police said. No arrests were reported. [via PHILLY.COM]
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Society Hill Woman Jumps Three Stories To Escape Rite Aid Bag Rapist
With nervous sighs, the witness described in court the frightening scene that had unfolded earlier inside her friend’s bedroom: As she and her friend were getting ready for the day, Rosario – who stayed overnight after allegedly entering the apartment between 2 and 3 a.m. with some of the friend’s acquaintances — came into the bedroom with a large knife, “the kind you use to chop cabbage with,” she testified. He “told us to get on the bed” and get undressed, she said. Rosario then ordered her friend to “get on her hands and knees,” she said. He took his pants off and pulled down his light-blue cotton boxers, she said. As he was about to “have sex” with her friend from behind, the woman asked him to use a condom, the younger woman testified. Rosario grabbed a Rite Aid bag and used it as a condom, she said. After he left the room, warning them “not to do any funny business,” the younger woman said that her friend “just looked at me and said, ‘I’ve just been raped.'” That’s when the two women planned to escape by jumping out the window — until Rosario “burst into the room,” sounding “like he kicked down” the door, which her friend had locked, the woman testified. The 30-year-old victim was not in court yesterday. Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti said in court that she had been “in a coma for several weeks … and is just now coming out.” He said after the hearing that she is still recovering in “outpatient-type care.” When she hit the sidewalk, she “obviously hit her head, she was bleeding out of her ear canals, bleeding out of the back of her head,” he said. [via DAILY NEWS]