Washington woman says prison failed to diagnose her husband's fatal illness, didn't inform her
Katie Kuhnhausen scrolled frantically. Seated in a parked car while her son’s soccer team practiced under the receding spring sun, she scoured the Washington Department of Corrections website for contact information.
She had tried to visit her husband the day before at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he had nearly completed his 17-month sentence for a felony gun possession charge and a traffic misdemeanor. But prison staff turned her away.
And she called. And called. But no one at the prison would give her a straight answer.
From her car, she fired off an email to the prison’s superintendent with the subject line: “HELP ME!!! HELP ME!!!”
“I have called the Penitentiary over the last week 16 times trying to get help and/or answers about my husband,” she typed that evening, April 22, 2024. “I still haven’t heard from my husband or a staff member letting me know about my husband’s condition.”
None of the Department of Corrections officials replied to her email that night. Only months later, after requesting her husband’s medical records, did she learn that he was no longer at the penitentiary as she frantically called for information. A medical crew was airlifting him to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.
https://apnews.com/article/prisons-katie-kuhnhausen-washington-walla-walla-spokane-17b5a83ff556d7d327fe955171a2d00f
Don't get me started on my rant about prison medical mistreatment; it's still a hot button issue for me! (PS; Apropos of nothing, my brother once worked at Sacred Heart as a hospitalist. I bet he could tell you a few stories too!)
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