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LARGO - Dorothy Palinchik, the 42-year-old waitress whose family alleges she did not receive adequate health care at Pinellas County Jail, died Thursday at Largo Medical Center, according to her live-in boyfriend.
Dorothy Palinchik
Her diagnosis was a combination of pneumonia and a type of staph infection that is resistant to antibiotics, family members said. Her time of death was 4:14 p.m., according to the hospital and family members.
The day before Valentine's Day, Palinchik was booked into Pinellas County Jail on charges she had stolen a $9.20 Philly steak sandwich from a Publix supermarket, said Palinchik's mother, whose name also is Dorothy.
Nine days later, she left the jail in an ambulance.
Palinchik's family and boyfriend think she got sick at the jail and that the staff there is responsible for her condition.
"They didn't give her proper medical care," said her mother. "I just don't think they wanted to deal with it."
The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, which oversees the jail, has a detention investigative unit that has started looking into the matter, said sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha. Such probes are launched whenever someone leaves the jail in a deteriorating health condition, Pasha said.
Pinellas Sheriff Jim Coats said it was too early to tell whether his staff did anything inappropriate, but he defended the quality of health care at the jail and the conditions there in general. The budget for inmate health care is $21 million, with roughly $2 million for pharmaceuticals, he said.
"A lot of these inmates, they've had little or no health care maintenance in their lives," Coats said. "We don't know what ailments they may or may not have and a lot of time we have to rely on what they tell us, or don't tell us."
Palinchik was accused of ordering the sandwich at the Publix in downtown St. Petersburg at dinnertime, and of walking out without paying for it, according to an arrest affidavit. She was charged with petty theft, with bail set at $250.
Palinchik's boyfriend, Michael Mullican, said he was out of town working as a truck driver in the Miami area when she was jailed. When he visited her at the jail's video visitation center Feb. 21, eight days after she was booked, she looked terrible, he said.
"The next time I saw her was Saturday afternoon on a ventilator at Largo Medical Center," Mullican said.
Pasha, the sheriff's spokeswoman, said Palinchik was transferred from a regular wing at the jail to a medical wing Feb. 21, the same day Mullican visited her, and the next evening she was transported by ambulance to Largo Medical Center...................
Family Blames Pinellas Jail For Female Inmate's Death
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