BY: Morgan Watkins , @morganwatkins26 –
Photo: anurakpong, Getty Images/iStockphoto
The state government plans to close the juvenile detention center where 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen died last year, according to state Sen. Whitney Westerfield.
Westerfield, a Hopkinsville Republican, told the Courier-Journal that the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice gave him a call Tuesday afternoon and told him they are closing the Lincoln Village Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Hardin County.
McMillen was found dead in her cell at Lincoln Village on Jan. 11, 2016. Shelbyville police had taken Gynnya to that facility the day before after she had a dispute with her mother.
Westerfield, who is chair of the Kentucky Senate’s judiciary committee, said he does not know when Lincoln Village will officially be closed. The facility is underutilized, he said, unlike the state’s overcrowded prisons and jails.
A spokesman for the state’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet did not immediately respond to the Courier-Journal’s request for comment Wednesday morning.
After Gynnya died, her mother, Michelle McMillen, eventually filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court.
McMillen’s lawsuit says Gynnya died from a sudden cardiac event, but it also claims that Lincoln Village employees falsified dozens of bed checks for Gynnya during her approximately 28-hour stay at the facility.
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The lawsuit also claims McMillen’s daughter was wrongfully kept in an isolation cell.
The teenager’s death sparked three independent investigations that all confirmed she died of natural causes, according to the Dept. of Juvenile Justice.
“After reviewing all the evidence, medical examiners were clear that this child passed away in her sleep, without any signs of distress that would have prompted medical attention,” the department said in a statement last September.
The juvenile justice department’s commissioner, Bob Hayter, was fired shortly after Gynnya died last year, and two former Lincoln Village employees were indicted on misdemeanor charges related to her death.
