COLON CASE Health agencies face suit

The suit alleges negligence, wrongful imprisonment and cruel punishment.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Another lawsuit has been filed on behalf of 15-year-old Jackie Colon, who is incarcerated for killing a baby last year.
Colon's mother, Michelle Colon of Austintown, filed the suit this week in U.S. District Court, Youngstown. It seeks more than $3 million in damages from several Mahoning County mental health agencies and providers, Forum Health and the D & amp;E Counseling Center of Youngstown.
The suit alleges that the agencies provided inadequate care for Jackie's psychiatric conditions, which ultimately resulted in her throwing an infant boy out a second-story window of her home in December 2000, then stabbing him nearly 60 times.
It also says the county is guilty of wrongful imprisonment and cruel and unusual punishment because Jackie was held in the juvenile justice center for some seven months after a judge ordered her placed into a residential treatment facility.
There are no state-run facilities in Ohio, and courts do not have authority to order a private facility to accept patients like Jackie. She was eventually placed into a facility in Oklahoma in October.
A similar suit was filed in June in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, then was dismissed a month later by Michelle Colon's attorney, Mark S. Colucci, who also filed the federal suit.
Colucci also filed a civil suit in common pleas court against the same agencies, on behalf of the baby victim's mother, Dawn Mraz of Pine Hollow Drive. That suit was dismissed because the judge ruled that the doctor and agencies involved are immune from such suits.
bjackson@vindy.com