Mother sues a Kentucky jail after son leaves in vegetative state, complaint says
A mother is suing a Kentucky detention center for negligence after she claims jail staff failed to do required medical checks on her son, resulting in him being left in a permanent vegetative state, according to the lawsuit.
Ethel Miller, the mother of Jonathan Conkright, filed a lawsuit in Rowan County Circuit Court against the facility in Morehead, alleging staff left her son without help during a medical emergency.
Her lawsuit, filed Wednesday, accuses Rowan County Detention Center Jailer Wes Coldiron and other deputies on staff of negligence, gross negligence and negligent training.
Miller’s attorney, Noel Caldwell, said the jailer and his staff failed to follow a basic policy which resulted in Conkright’s vegetative condition. He is not expected to recover.
“Video evidence proves that Mr. Conkright suffered a serious medical emergency — a medical emergency that could have been stopped or treated if the defendants had simply followed policy,” Caldwell told the Herald-Leader.
Jailer Wes Coldiron was not immediately available for comment Thursday morning.
Lawsuit claims jail staff didn’t follow policy
Conkright was booked into the Rowan County jail Sept. 5, 2025, at 3:44 a.m., according to the court filing. He was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of menacing.
Within a few hours, Conkright was classified as “high-risk” status because he was expressing suicidal ideations, according to court records.
When a person is placed on high-risk status, jail policy states that staff must check on the inmate every 20 minutes, the lawsuit says.
Over a seven-hour period, five of the observation checks for Conkright were outside the 20-minute window, the lawsuit states. The last check on Conkright was conducted at 5:47 p.m.
An hour later, at 6:50 p.m., deputy Erica Griffith called Conkright to get up for his pretrial hearing. But when he didn’t respond, she noticed his hands shaking and clenched, according to the jail’s incident report. Griffith thought Conkright was experiencing a seizure.
When Griffith and another deputy, Melissa Mendibles, entered Conkright’s cell, they noticed his face was discolored, and his fists were clenched, according to court documents.
Review of the jail cell’s video footage showed Conkright had been experiencing a medical emergency at least 25 minutes before deputies entered his cell, the lawsuit says. He can be seen on the video with his arms curled up and his hands under his chin, body twitching, and at times, in a fixed position. He can be heard loudly groaning on the recording.
When the deputies began performing life-saving measures, Conkright’s oxygen level registered a 37, the lawsuit says. A normal reading is above 90.
While Conkright regained his pulse, he never regained consciousness, the lawsuit says.
“Conkright’s tragic medical condition and injuries were caused by the complete failure of the defendants to adhere to a standard jail policy of checking on a high-risk inmate every twenty minutes,” the lawsuit reads. “By the time it was discovered that Conkright was having a medical emergency, Conkright had not been personally observed or checked for an hour.”
The jail had not filed a response to the lawsuit as of Thursday morning.
