Pittsburgh Woman Loses Arm After Alleged Police Brutality And Jail Neglect

By David Ferguson
The Raw Story
Jan. 01, 2014

A Pennsylvania woman lost an arm due to injuries she claims were inflicted on her by sheriff’s deputies and ignored by jail staff. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Amy J. Needham, 35, filed suit in Allegheny County Court on Monday after events in April of this year left her arm amputated above the elbow.

Needham was arrested on a warrant in April because she failed to appear at a preliminary hearing on charges of simple assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Her attorney told the Post-Gazette that the woman was using the bathroom when sheriff’s department officers broke down the door, shocked her with a taser and bound her in wrist and arm restraints that were too tight.

[...]Needham’s attorney, Marvin Leibowitz, told the Post-Gazette that the mother of three asked to see a doctor 16 times over the course of a week’s confinement in Allegheny County Jail. Finally, she was taken to UPMC Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, where doctors removed most of her irreversibly damaged arm.

“She feels that her life is ruined,” Leibowitz said. Needham was a restaurant employee who is now unemployed while she waits to be fitted with a prosthesis.

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