More defendants file responses to lawsuit

Several more defendants have filed responses in the Jackie Dean Reynolds wrongful-death lawsuit.

Mark Reynolds, Jackie Reynolds' son and administrator of his estate, is suing Alleghany Memorial Hospital, Dr. Thomas Douglas Murray, physician's assistant Donna Reeves, New River Area Programs (a.k.a New River Behavioral Healthcare), outpatient therapist/social worker Carol Elizabeth Miller Holcomb, and then-Alleghany County Sheriff's Department officers Michael Sawyers and D.R. Dickens over his father's death four years ago.

Through their respective attorneys, Murray filed his official answer Sept. 5, AMH filed its response Sept. 6, and Sawyer and Dickens filed their answer Sept. 10.

Holcomb and New River Area Programs had previously filed their response Aug. 29.

Like that response, the three most recent responses also deny the suit's allegations of wrongdoing and negligence. The defendants each deny that their actions or omissions were the cause of Jackie Reynolds' death. Reynolds, a 46-year-old Wilkes County resident, was taken to AMH, then to the Alleghany County Jail, following a single-vehicle crash April 19, 1998 on U.S. 221 near Sparta. He became unconscious following an altercation with sheriff's department personnel at the jail and was taken by helicopter to N.C. Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. He remained in a coma and died there June 21, 1998.

The suit alleges that the hospital, Murray and Reeves acted negligently in failing to determine that a medical/psychiatric emergency existed and in releasing Reynolds to the jail rather than admitting him to the hospital.

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