A woman died from a suspected overdose in jail days after a Kensington sweep, lawsuit says
Amanda Cahill was arrested in a September 2024 police-led sweep of Kensignton. A federal lawsuit brought by her family says she died of overdose after taking fentanyl she obtained while in jail.
Four days after Amanda Cahill was arrested in a September 2024 coordinated law enforcement sweep throughout Kensington, she was found unresponsive in her jail cell.
A federal lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of Cahill’s mother and two children says the 31-year-old from Roxborough died of a drug overdose from fentanyl she obtained inside the city’s Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center on State Road. The complaint asks for damages of at least $10 million.
John Coyle, a McEldrew Purtell attorney representing the family, said Cahill’s death was “avoidable if the city kept its obligations and its promises to the people that it arrests.”
“Ms. Cahill needed help and the city took her and locked her away,” Coyle said. “And it resulted in her death.”
A spokesperson for the city’s law department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Cahill was one of 34 people arrested in the police-led sweep, part of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s efforts to ramp up enforcement of drug laws in Kensington, the center of the city’s opioid crisis. She was arrested on drug possession charges.
After she was booked at Philadelphia Police Department headquarters, the suit says, Cahill was taken to Pennsylvania Hospital to receive treatment for her addiction. She was transferred to the city’s jail complex that day or the day after, according to the complaint.
Throughout her time in custody, Cahill was “suffering” but received no “regular” medical evaluation or monitoring, the complaint says.
Early in the morning of Sept. 7, Cahill cried and begged for help from her cell, according to the complaint. People incarcerated in nearby cells believed that she was in immediate danger and tried to get the attention of correctional officers, the lawsuit says.
Around 7:45 that morning, Cahill was found unresponsive in her cell. Cahill died of a suspected fentanyl overdose, according to the complaint.
Because of the levels of fentanyl detected in an autopsy, a toxicologist concluded that she had consumed the drug within hours of her death, Coyle said. Based on that finding, the lawsuit contends Cahill must have been sold or given the fentanyl while in custody.
“The use and trafficking of illegal drugs within Philadelphia prisons has been wide spread and well known to the city and has been exacerbated by the city’s chronic understaffing of the jails,” the lawsuit says.
Between 2018 and July 2024, at least 25 people died in Philadelphia jails of accidents related to drug intoxication, an Inquirer analysis published last summer found.
» READ MORE: Drug deaths and overdoses plague Philly jails, raising concerns about plans to step up Kensington arrests
Some of those deaths were attributed to overdoses, and, according to court filings, other people were going through withdrawal when they died. In addition, one woman died by suicide while in withdrawal in the jail, according to a 2022 lawsuit.
The city noted in an August 2024 statement that the overdose death rate in Philadelphia jails was the same as the citywide rate, despite higher rates of addiction among incarcerated people.
Philadelphia’s jail system is a national leader in providing medications for opioid addiction, one of just a handful of county jails in Pennsylvania that allow inmates to start new prescriptions for buprenorphine, an opioid that quells drug cravings.
But staffing issues have plagued the program. In 2024, The Inquirer reported that while patients were given buprenorphine to ease withdrawal symptoms when arriving at the jail, understaffing had created a weeks-long backlog for patients hoping to receive longer-term addiction treatment. Illicit drugs were also widespread within the jails, advocates told The Inquirer.
The jails are also under monitoring ordered by a federal judge in a long-running lawsuit over conditions, including understaffing and delays in medical care.
The monitor’s last report, issued in March, said that the city is still not fulfilling its commitment to improve conditions, but that conditions had improved because of small staffing increases and a decrease in the prison population.
City officials did not immediately return a request for comment on current conditions in the jails.
The complaint says chronic understaffing in Philadelphia’s jails, as well as documented security issues, contributed to Cahill’s death.
“Indeed, the very failures to do a physical inspection count and to monitor the block, allowed Ms. Cahill’s pleas for help to be left unaddressed,” the lawsuit says.