The death wasnt suspicious. She was "kicking" from the drugs she was on & throwing up blood & her insides. It was only a matter of time before she was going to expire. If it happened in the jail or on the way to the hospital she was going to expire that night.
Funny how the Jersey Journal doesnt mention how the Ambulance showed up & what happed from there.

I feel bad for her passing but if she just became a grandmother then she had her first child at 17 and then her child had his/her kid at 17 as well (hopefully! otherwise they were 18 and 16 or 19 and 15 etc.)... and now her 5 children are motherless. I'm sorry, but if the government can determine when we can drink alcohol, I think they are completely entitled to determine if people can have kids or not. People should need a license or something!

Suspected prostitute dies in jail -- but no video, no recordings, and no answers, family says

by Earl Morgan/The Jersey Journal
Tuesday March 10, 2009, 11:16 PM



Joann Figueroa became sick at the Hudson County jail and then died.

The family of a woman who died in the Hudson County jail says it is not satisfied with the explanation of her death offered by officials and is hoping the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office can provide some answers.

Joann Figueroa, 34, who had been jailed on prostitution and drug charges stemming from a May 14 incident in Jersey City, became ill in the Kearny jail and died on July 26.

The autopsy report said Figueroa -- who had five children and one grandchild living in Philadelphia -- died from complications after her esophagus, the tube through which food passes to reach the stomach, ruptured.

"Joann had been in institutions before, but she always called to let us know how she was doing," said Carmen Melendez, Figueroa's aunt, who was only recently notified that her niece had died. "We knew she was in jail, but we thought she would be all right there."

Several weeks ago, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio confirmed his office is conducting an inquiry, but it has very little to work with because jail officials say there is no video or audio recordings of the events leading to Figueroa's death. His office said its investigation should be completed this week.

The jail also has an internal investigation into Figueroa's death, but no conclusions have been announced.

The official cause of death was "aorta esophageal fistula," which Dr. Tad Majchrzak, a general practitioner in Jersey City, described as blood flowing from the aorta, a vein in the neck, and leaking through the esophagus and into the stomach.

WebMD, a leading Web site on health care, says 3 in 100,000 people suffer from a ruptured esophagus.

"We have been trying to find out what happened to Joann," Melendez said. "When I asked the investigator who contacted me what happened I was told Joann may have died from a heart condition."

It took months for jail officials to notify Figueroa's family because they said they had no address for the next of kin. Eventually an investigator for the county located Melendez.

A source at the jail who did not want to be identified told The Jersey Journal that Figueroa was taken from her cell to the infirmary on July 25, complaining that she was coughing up blood. Figueroa was kept for observation for several hours before being returned to her cell, the source said.

The following day, a guard opened her cell and Figueroa bolted to a bathroom at the end of the cell block and fell unconscious, the source said. Later she was pronounced dead at the Jersey City Medical Center, the source said.

At a freeholders meeting in September, Hudson County Corrections Department Officer Lashaundra Gibson O'Neil said it took "about nine, 10 minutes" for help to arrive.

There's no video footage of Figueroa's cell block from that day, jail Director Oscar Aviles told the freeholders, because of a power outage that disabled the cameras.

A record of Gibson O'Neil's call for help and the response are also not available, Aviles added, because radio communications between officers are automatically purged after 30 days.

With so few answers, some family members say there appears to be a cover-up.

Luz Mendosa, Figueroa's mother, has retained a Philadelphia lawyer and says she is considering a lawsuit.