Tati Mackey holds photographs of her father, Shaheen Mackey, during a 2018 interview shortly after his death.
Times Leader file photo
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Mary Loughlin said she cried watching a video of Luzerne County prison inmate Shaheen Mackey in a restraint chair because she clearly recognized signs he was having a seizure and not receiving proper help.
“It’s the classic grand mal seizure,” Loughlin, northeast resource coordinator for the Epilepsy Foundation, Eastern Pennsylvania, said Friday. “He wasn’t resisting when they told him to stay still and not move. Those were his involuntary actions due to the seizure.”
Publicly released by Mackey’s family recently, the 23-minute video focused on the period when the 41-year-old Berwick man was in the chair and became unresponsive. He was transported from the prison to Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, where he died two days later.
Litigation filed by Mackey’s estate argues the county should have known he was epileptic and prone to seizures because he had disclosed that information at the Columbia County Correctional Facility when he was lodged there on June 5, 2018, the day before his transfer to the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Wilkes-Barre.
His medical questionnaire at Luzerne County “simply indicates that every answer was ‘No.’” The complaint alleges the prison “falsely answered the questionnaire, without consulting with Mr. Mackey.” The county never got to the stage of providing a complete defensive response to the litigation allegations because the lawsuit is still in discovery and awaiting approval of a settlement.
Based on video and county accounts, correctional officers restrained Mackey because of his violent behavior and operated under the assumption Mackey was on drugs, although the complaint said no drugs were in his system.
Loughlin said aggression is normal because a person suffering from a seizure is often disoriented, powerless to stop what’s happening and overcome with a “fight or flight” reaction.
She’s witnessed at least a thousand seizures, including some suffered by her epileptic son.
At times, her son’s seizures made him appear combative, she said.
Loughlin said she once had to explain what was happening to nuns in a hospital because her normally respectful and polite son was “cursing like a sailor” and acting out because of a seizure. Another time, he was “flinging and punching” because he was scared and confused coming out of a seizure, she said.
“He didn’t know where he was, what he was doing or what he was saying. They don’t remember it after and have no idea what they did,” Loughlin said.
With the nationwide prevalence of drug activity, Loughlin said she is hearing more cases of prisons and law enforcement mistakenly assuming people suffering from seizures are high or withdrawing from drugs, including other instances in this region.
The key is training to detect and treat seizures, which is offered free by her organization, she said.
Luzerne County prison officials reached out to the Epilepsy Foundation late last year or early this year to request training, which was sidetracked due to the coronavirus pandemic, she said.
An online Zoom training session for area police is planned for September, with registration details to be posted at www.efepa.org.
In watching the Mackey video, Loughlin said he should have been turned to his side to prevent him from choking on his saliva and not held down.
Ideally, someone suffering from a seizure should be provided space due to the convulsions and be reassured with calm voices, she said.
A seizure lasting more than five minutes warrants a seizure rescue medication and immediate transport to a hospital, she said.
Any face covering, including the spit mask used in this case, should not be permitted because those suffering from a seizure have shallow breathing and “need to get air.” Face coverings also prevent observers from witnessing facial signs of a seizure.
She recognized prisons have challenges due to security and layout but said protocols can be implemented to help address them.
More awareness of seizures is needed in general because one in 26 people will have them in their lifetime, including those with no history of epilepsy, she said.
Attorney Barry H. Dyller, who represented the Mackey’s estate, said his Wilkes-Barre firm has been contacted, without solicitation, by several epilepsy experts who were “very upset by what they saw in the video.”
He said there are many kinds of seizures, not just the “common perception of someone thrashing on the ground.”
“They observed classic symptoms of a seizure,” Dyller said of the medical professionals who reached out to him. “To the experts, it was completely obvious.”
Dyller said he cannot understand why the county prison is maintaining it was unaware of the seizure when Mackey voluntarily informed another prison of his condition the day before.
His firm and the plaintiff soon plan to release another in-prison video showing the period before Mackey was placed in the restraint chair, he said.
A hearing on the county’s proposed $3 million settlement with the estate is set for Sept. 9 in federal court, he said.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.