The daughter of a woman who died in Tarrant County Jail custody in February is suing county agencies for information about her mother’s death.
Kimberly Phillips, 56, died on Feb. 18. The local medical examiner’s office ruled she died of complications of dehydration and malnutrition — making her at least the fourth person in recent years whose death in Tarrant County custody was linked to dehydration.
The county has moved to withhold records about Phillips’ incarceration and death from her legal team, citing an ongoing criminal investigation, according to Chidi D. Anunobi, the attorney for Phillips' daughter Maranda Mills. He filed a lawsuit on Monday in Tarrant County’s 352nd District Court, calling the decision to withhold the documents unlawful.
“Although Tarrant County has refused to provide any further information to family members under the pretext of criminal investigation, the little-known circumstances surrounding Ms. Phillips’s death suggest possible abuse, denial of necessary care, and systemic failure to ensure inmate safety,” he wrote in an emailed statement to local news outlets.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, previously told KERA News it will provide an update on Phillips’ case once the investigation is finished.
"Until then, we ask for patience, not speculation, as investigators gather all relevant facts," the sheriff's office said in a statement.
According to the lawsuit, Anunobi’s office requested documents such as intake logs, custody records, medical charts and surveillance footage, and the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office successfully appealed the request to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
The investigation into Phillips’ death is ongoing, and releasing the records would interfere with that, Tarrant County DA Phil Sorrells argued in his appeal letter, included in the lawsuit filing.
More than a month after that letter, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office made Phillips’ cause of death public on its records search website, the lawsuit states.
"Notwithstanding, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner has refused to provide the medical records and any additional supporting records to [Mills] even though the
Medical Examiner has supposedly completed its determination of Ms. Phillips’s cause of death," the lawsuit states.
The Tarrant County Jail has been under intense scrutiny for years over deaths and allegations of abuse and neglect in custody. Since 2022, the county has paid out more than $4.3 million in jail-related lawsuits.
The county offered $750,000 to the family of Georga Kay Baldwin, a woman with severe mental illness who died of suspected dehydration despite having a water fountain in her cell.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org.
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