An Alabama woman has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that her civil rights and those of her infant daughter were violated after jail staff where she was incarcerated allegedly left her to labor alone for more than a day.
Tiffany McElroy, now 28, was booked into an Alabama jail in May 2024. Three days after arriving, she said she felt her water break weeks before she was expected to give birth.
McElroy, who was being held on charges stemming from an allegation of substance use during pregnancy, later discovered she had suffered a pregnancy complication that could have progressed into sepsis. According to the lawsuit, she informed a guard that her water had broken and believed she would be taken to a hospital for treatment.
Instead, the complaint states that another guard who checked on her later that morning accused her of wetting herself and instructed her to return to her cell. The lawsuit says that over the following 24 hours, McElroy repeatedly asked jail employees to call 911, but they never did – even as other inmates pounded on cell windows and tables while pleading for assistance.