Posted on 11/11/2008 1:31:09 PM PST by RogerFGay
CLEVELAND -- R&B singer Sean Levert entered the Cuyahoga County Jail on March 24 clutching the prescribed medication he took regularly for anxiety.
Jail staff took the bottle of Xanax away from him and failed to give him a single pill during the six days he was there, investigators said. Even when he began suffering horrifying delusions, he wasn't given his medication and never saw a doctor.
Instead, on March 30, jailers strapped Levert into a restraint chair, still fighting the monstrous visions in his head caused by withdrawal from the medication. Minutes later, the 39-year-old son of O'Jays star Eddie Levert stopped breathing. His heart then stopped and doctors couldn't save him.
Recently released Cuyahoga County investigators' reports, interviews and the Cuyahoga County coroner's report together reveal the details of Sean E. Levert Sr.'s final days in the overcrowded jail, run by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office.
Levert was sentenced March 24 to 22 months in prison for owing $90,988.96 to three children he fathered before marrying 13 years ago. Deputies brought him from a Cuyahoga County courtroom to the jail in the same building. During the booking process, Levert surrendered a bottle of Xanax that contained 37 pills. He began taking the 2-milligram pills three times a day in November 2007. The prescription for 90 pills was refilled on March 12.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.cleveland.com ...
ping
One does not cold-turkey off of Xanax. Death is certainly a possiblility
Prisons and jails are horrible places for people on medications.
You see what I’m trying to tell you? Fame kills.
So sad that both of Daddy Lavert’s sons died so close together.
Then Sean is the only one who should be alive in the family.
Not good press for either the Cuyahoga PD or for Xanax.
Ah, yes. Once again, I ask, “Do you trust your government?”
What's wrong with this picture...
He died on March 30th.
No one came to see him? Surely he has an attorney.
Ohhhhhhh....Thanks....
and they took his pills away on March 24th.
Well, we wouldn’t want him to get behind in his payments, now would we.
It’s for the kids, you know. /sarc
By Jupiter, that's a good point!
2 mg/3 times a day is a pretty high dosage. I have some stress factors in my own life and had a heart attack back in ‘07 which my doctor sees as reason to prescribe Xanax. I take 1 mg each day - at the most - usually not even that much. I can’t even imagine being able to function at the dose he was taking and know that he should not have been “cold turkeyed” off of it like this.
They will probably try to snatch any monies from a wrongful death suit for the back payments.
It sounds like he was being prescribed that drug for far longer than the normally allowed 2-8 weeks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alprazolam
If he died, it was his doctor’s fault, not his jailers’
The assumption that he just died? He went to jail March 24th and died March 30th. 53 pills taken 3/12-24, that's 4 to 5 pills a day.
Obama doesn’t want a mother to be punished with her baby but the father is on the hook for 18 years whether he wants to be or not. What’s wrong with this picture?
The baby has a right to life, not to be terminated by a selfish parent. There is a time to make a “choice” and it occurs before conception.
The adults (including women) who want to be sterile have surgical methods they can employ, no sense in getting surgical when it comes to killing a child.
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