A doctor from San Diego was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter after she was accused of neglecting an inmate who was critically ill.

Dr. Friederike Von Lintig pleaded not guilty to the charge when she was arraigned at a Superior Court in San Diego in connection with the death of 24-year-old Elisa Serna, who collapsed and died at the Las Colinas Detention Facility in San Diego.

Dr. Von Lintig had a contract to work as the jail’s physician through the Coastal Hospitalist Medical Associates. She was the doctor on duty on the night of November 11, 2019, when the 24-year-old died.

The inmate, Serna, had been arrested on suspicion of drug possession and taken to jail five days before her death. According to her family, she had been struggling with heroin addiction for a long time.

Serna reported to the nurses that she felt nauseous and dizzy the day before her death, and she was moved to the medical observation unit for close monitoring.

The lawsuit, filed against San Diego County, accused Dr. Von Lintig and a nurse, Danalee Pascua, of ignoring signs that Serna was seriously ill. Last year, in November, nurse Pascua was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Serna’s death.

As evidenced by a medical note that Dr. Von Lintig wrote on Serna’s medical chart, she accused her of faking her sickness and wrote that she doubted the fainting spell was an actual seizure. She said that she suspected a “second gain.” The term refers to patients suspected of faking symptoms to get attention or gain something else.

On November 11, 2019, Serna had a seizure at around 7 pm in front of nurse Pascua and a deputy. They saw her fall to the ground, but they did nothing about it. The nurse did not check her vitals, conduct an examination or run any blood tests. She and the deputy ignored Serna and left her in the cell without calling for help.

They left Serna on the cell floor for an hour before the nurse returned with other deputies and made futile attempts to save her life.

The lawsuit says that surveillance footage of the cell showed Serna slowly dying and urinating on herself. It claimed that no one checked on Serna even though she was in the medical observation unit.

They left her to die on the floor of the jail cell. 

San Diego County has been consistently ranked with the highest rate of inmate deaths for over a decade. Serna was among 16 inmates that died in the county in 2019. This year alone, the county has recorded 18 inmate deaths. The county has been grappling with the high number of inmate deaths, and this year’s state audit found that San Diego’s inmate mortality rate was the highest out of all California counties.

In another recent case, San Diego County will pay $4.35 million to an inmate who blinded herself in front of a deputy while she was on drugs. She sued the county for failing to protect her from herself.

Dr. Von Lintig, who barely spoke at the hearing, could get up to four years in jail if found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The court will hold her preliminary hearing on March 29, 2023.