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Patient Murdered, Family Sues Hospital

The family of a man strangled to death by his roommate at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, the Miami Heraldreports. Raul Alexander Rios, 32, was being treated in the hospital’s psychiatric ward. His roommate, Alexander Thadeus Jackson, 31, is in jail, charged with murder.

In a separate case, Orange County Corrections is increasing staffing and tightening security for any inmate off-site medical care, after an inmate attacked a jail officer at Orlando Regional Medical Center, the Orlando Sentinelreports. The hospital is responding as well, and giving inmates Styrofoam plates instead of a ceramic plate that was used in the attack, the Sentinel reports.

In other prison news, another inmate was reported dead the same day the head of the Department of Corrections visited Dade Correctional Institution to investigate the suspicious death of an inmate two years ago, the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureaureports. The deputy warden was suspended, joining the jail warden who had been suspended a daily earlier, the Times/Herald reports.

In another case, the Broward County Sheriff's jail is accused in a lawsuit of letting a mentally ill inmate die, wasting away to half of his body weight, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports.

Originally founded in December 2006 as an independent grassroots publication dedicated to coverage of health issues in Florida, Health News Florida was acquired by WUSF Public Media in September 2012.