A medical examiner says leukemia killed a Missouri jail inmate whose health deteriorated before he was found dead in his cell.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports 20-year-old Lamar Catchings wasn’t diagnosed until after he died on March 1 in the St. Louis County jail. He’d been jailed for 11 months on assault and armed criminal action charges.
A medical examiner report obtained through a public record request says he most likely had an aggressive form of leukemia in which too many immature blood-forming cells, called promyelocytes, accumulate in the blood and bone marrow. Blood tests can be used to diagnose the condition, which is considered the most curable form of adult leukemia.
The County Council’s Justice, Health and Welfare Committee chairwoman, Rochelle Walton Gray, says the death raises “more questions about procedures that were apparently not followed.”
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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com
