FL Inmate's death leads to probe of Lowell Womens Prison

quote:

---

Though he’d been arrested twice — once for allegedly dealing steroids and again, on charges ofbeating a motorist in a fit of road rage — Quercioli managed to persuade the Florida Department of Corrections to hire him in 2004.

Prisoners say Sgt. Q, as he was known, was among the most menacing officers at Lowell Correctional Institution for women, a man whose patience was not to be tested. But on Sept. 21, 2014, one inmate dared to do just that, after seeing something she wasn’t supposed to see: Quercioli allegedly having sex with an inmate in C Dorm, in a rear bathroom behind the officers’ station.

Disgusted, the inmate — Latandra Ellington — vowed to report it, even though, according to her, Quercioli threatened to kill her if she didn’t keep her mouth shut.

---

quote:

---

Ten days later, after telling her family and prison authorities about the threat, Ellington was found dead in a confinement cell at Lowell.

---

quote:

---

What neither the autopsy nor the FDLE report noted, however, was that toxicology tests showed Ellington had a potentially toxic level of a blood pressure medication, called Amlodipine, in her system. Wolf, in a recent interview with the Herald, attributed the elevated Amlodipine to a process called “post-mortem redistribution,’’ in which levels of certain medications can increase in a person’s bloodstream after death.

---