Corrections officer, security company named in Delnor hospital hostage lawsuit
Geneva IL June 10 2017
Private attorneys have entered appearances stating they’re representing a Kane County corrections officer and contract security company named in a lawsuit faulting the Kane County sheriff’s office in a hostage standoff last month at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva.
Four nurses, including two who were taken hostage, are suing the sheriff’s office, one of its officers and a security company paid by the hospital seeking compensatory damages, court costs, attorney fees and other relief over the hours-long hostage ordeal. The event was instigated by a 21-year-old inmate who had been on suicide watch at the jail and was receiving medical treatment at the hospital, according to the lawsuit.
Filed in May in U.S. District Court, the lawsuit alleges Shawn Loomis, one of several Kane County corrections deputies assigned to guard Tywon Salters around the clock, left him unshackled, then ran and hid after the inmate took the officer’s gun.
Salters, who was ultimately killed when a SWAT team officer shot him, ending the standoff, raped one of the nurses he took hostage, according to the lawsuit.
Michael D. Bersani and Michael W. Condon, both partners of Hervas, Condon & Bersani P.C., are representing Loomis, who joined the department in November 1999 and has been on paid administrative leave following the May 13 hostage episode.
The Itasca-based firm specializes in litigation involving municipalities, civil rights and state torts, along with employment law and police and fire employment matters, according to its website.
Reached by phone Friday, Bersani said it was too early to comment on the case, but confirmed he and Condon were representing only Loomis.
Representing Apex3 Security are Adam J. Jagadich and Dan Alexander of the Chicago-based Segal McCambridge Singer & Mahoney, Ltd., a trial firm focusing on civil litigation.
Jagadich did not immediately return a phone message left Friday morning about the case.
The office of Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon is tasked with representing the county and its employees in civil litigation. As of Friday afternoon, nothing had been filed by the state’s attorney’s office on behalf of the county or sheriff’s department.
In a news briefing Tuesday, McMahon told reporters that his office’s civil division would be assisted by outside attorneys in the lawsuit and said that to avoid conflicts, the civil attorneys and criminal division will conduct separate reviews of the Delnor case, which Geneva police are also reviewing and Illinois State Police are investigating as the lead agency.
The lawsuit alleges that the sheriff’s office, Loomis and the private security company paid by the hospital knew Salters posed a danger to nurses and staff, yet failed to handle him properly.
The Beacon News
