A federal court has dismissed a lawsuit against employees of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office that attempted to hold them liable for failing to protect an at-risk inmate from hanging herself in 2017.

U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews, in a Jan. 19 order. determined the allegations of the victim’s surviving family and estate did not reach the threshold of showing jail personnel acted with deliberate indifference.

Susanne Burgaz, 54, was in custody at the Jefferson County Detention Services Division facility, where staff reportedly knew she had a history of mental illness and substance abuse, with a risk for suicide. The jail assigned her to the Special Housing Unit, intended for detainees in those categories, on Aug. 30, 2017.

According to the legal complaint, Burgaz was in a recreation room around 9 p.m. the following day when a deputy escorted her back to her cell. After retrieving legal documents and some belongings, the deputy took Burgaz again to the recreation room. Burgaz was reportedly distraught after learning from the deputy that she was ineligible for release due to two warrants. Roughly 10 minutes later, she began pounding on the door, but no jail personnel responded.

Shortly afterward, Burgaz made a noose out of television wires and cords in the room. Twenty minutes after returning, Burgaz attempted to hang herself, and ultimately succeeded. Deputies discovered her body at 10 p.m.

A second deputy performed a walk-through of the area at 9:25, but he seemingly did not clearly look into the recreation room.

The room “does not have the same level of suicide mitigation measures as other areas, making it the most dangerous room in the SHU,” alleged the complaint against the county. Anyone monitoring the video feed in the room would “immediately recognize” Burgaz was attempting suicide.

A subsequent investigation from the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office could not prove the jail personnel were criminally negligent in her death.

Burgaz’s family members sued Jefferson County, Sheriff Jeff Shrader and the two deputies on duty for deliberate indifference to her serious medical needs pursuant to federal civil rights law. The deputies asserted qualified immunity, which is a judicial doctrine that generally shields government employees from liability absent a violation of clearly-established legal rights.

Crews found the claims fell short of demonstrating that the deputies knew about Burgaz’s status as a “red flag” risk.

The plaintiffs “fail to plausibly allege the Deputies either knew or drew the inference that Ms. Burgaz, specifically, presented a substantial risk of suicide,” Crews wrote in his order.

To the claim that the deputies knew of an excessive risk to Burgaz’s safety and disregarded it, the magistrate judge observed the deputies were not trained medical staff who plausibly knew that her level of distress over being ineligible for release meant she had a substantial suicide potential.

“While the sufficiency of a walk-through may have bearing on whether a deputy breached the duty to perform his or her job responsibilities with reasonable care for purposes of a negligence claim,” wrote the county in asking to dismiss the lawsuit, “the failure to conduct a sufficiently rigorous walk-through, without more, is insufficient to demonstrate constitutional deliberate indifference to a particular risk to a particular inmate.”

Crews granted qualified immunity to the defendants. The case is Estate of Susanne Burgaz v. Jefferson County et al.