By Courtenay Harris Bond

Copyright phillyvoice

Gina Clark, whose daughter died in a Philadelphia jail just over a year ago, said she wants to make sure no one else suffers the same fate.

“I don’t want to see anyone else treated the way she was treated,” Clark said Wednesday.

On Monday, Clark’s lawyer filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claiming more than $10 million in damages for the wrongful death of her daughter, Amanda Cahill, at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Complex.

Cahill was arrested Sept. 4, 2024 on drug charges during a sweep in Kensington, the site of a large open-air drug market, before being transported to Pennsylvania Hospital and then to PICC. Cahill died Sept. 7 of a suspected fentanyl overdose at PICC after she and other nearby inmates clamored for hours for her to get medical attention, according to the complaint. Cahill, a mother of two from Roxborough, was 31.

“We think this is a really troubling situation where the city took a vulnerable person as part of rounding up a vulnerable population and put them into a prison system that they knew was not equipped and not staffed to deal with the realities of housing this vulnerable population,” said John Coyle, the attorney from the Philadelphia firm McEldrew Purtell that is representing Cahill’s family. “And it obviously led to Miss Cahill’s death, something we look forward to litigating in the courts and then something we hope (the) city takes steps to avoid moving forward.”

The level of fentanyl in Cahill’s blood indicated that she consumed the drug within hours of her death and that she must have obtained the fentanyl at PICC, the lawsuit says.

Cahill “did not receive regular medical evaluations and/or monitoring during her stay at PICC, despite exhibiting outward and obvious symptoms of substance abuse issues,” the complaint says.

The city’s law department declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Cahill was incarcerated at PICC, even though it has “both a history of unimpeded drug use and distribution, and a history of the inability to monitor or care for people with serious drug dependency issues,” the complaint says.

In the weeks before Cahill’s death, the city was ordered by a judge to prioritize filling staff vacancies within the Department of Prisons and pay $25 million into a fund to be used for improvement at the prisons. The judge found the city in contempt of violating a 2022 settlement agreement that resulted from a class-action lawsuit over alleged inhumane conditions and other civil rights violations in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. The agreement appointed a federal monitor to oversee the city’s implementation of improvements in the prison department.

The next monitor report is due to be published later this fall.

A spokesperson for the city’s law department declined to comment, saying the “most recent monitor report has not been completed.”

The city must respond to the federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Cahill’s mother and two sons by Oct. 7, Coyle said.

Cahill’s sister Amber, 27, said the last year has been “the longest year of our life, not only for us but for her boys.”

Cahill’s sons, 13 and 7, live with Clark.

Clark said she is doing her best to try to help Cahill’s boys as they struggle in the wake of her death.

“She was a good mom,” Clark said.

Cahill “really did put that fight up” against her addiction, Clark said. “It just superseded her, sadly. But she did try.”