People gathered at Flatbush Reformed Church Tuesday to demand justice for a woman who died six months ago at Brooklyn Central Booking.
Kyam Livingston reportedly begged jail officials for help while lying on the floor of a cell, but her cries for help were allegedly ignored by correction officials and Livingston passed away.
Inmates told the The Daily News that when they banged on the cell door to tell officers of Livingston’s stomach pains and diarrhea, they were told that Livingston was an alcoholic.
Livingston, 38, was pronounced dead at Brooklyn Hospital Health Center. She was a mother of two.
NewsOne reports that family and friends of Livingston gathered to light candles in Livingston’s memory and demand justice for their loved one.
“Animals have died a better death than my sister died,” said Kyam Livingston’s sister, Ashanta Livingston. “She died in a place where she had nobody. I’m grateful for the females that were there, but she had no family with her. Why is she gone? I don’t know why.”
“”Everybody, I believe, needs to be removed from Central Bookings and cleaned out and retrained in order for stuff to get done,” said Livingston’s mother, Anita Neal.
Neal remembered what it was like going back and forth trying to locate her child’s body.
“I finally got to see my daughter,” Neal said, weeping. “It was her. She was in the morgue. They wouldn’t even let me touch my child.”
The family also says Mayor de Blasio, who has been heralded as an agent of change, has been mostly unresponsive in this case.
The Guardian reports that Livingston’s death was one of a few hundred jail deaths across the U.S.
“In 2011, (the latest available numbers) 885 inmates died(pdf) in the custody of local jails, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reported,” according to the paper. And this number does not include the inmates who died while in prison.