A tortured mind, a suicide, now his name lives on in court

FORT WAYNE, Ind. --The plight of Jonathan Ohlwine has been well publicized.

A victim of extreme childhood cruelty, all his life he was tortured by demons he tried to overcome.

HIs wife, Trisha Ohlwine, attempted again and again to get him the help he so needed. To say the system failed him is an understatement she tells anyone who will listen.

Jonathan and his daughter

His demons took hold in October 2019 and told him to burn down their house. In order to protect herself and her children, Trisha Ohlwine felt forced to divorce her husband.

But she never stopped loving the father of her two children and she never stopped fighting for him.

On Oct. 13, 2023, when he was found in a jail shower with the undershirt he used to hang himself around his neck, she couldn’t let it go. Ohlwine had been incarcerated on Sept. 12.

Ohlwine filed a civil lawsuit on Aug. 5 in Allen Superior Court against the Allen County Jail, jail officials, the Fort Wayne Police Department, individual police officers and the jail’s medical provider, Quality Correctional Care, a Carmel-based private company, for negligence and wrongful death.

According to its website, QCC provides medical care to 65 out of 91 Hoosier county jails, however, the data dates to 2020 and the number is likely higher.

Here is what QCC says about medical treatment:

Ohlwine

“To ensure that inmates’ medical care needs are met, we have developed thorough and comprehensive healthcare protocols and procedures that are easy to follow for nursing staff and correctional officers alike. This ensures that there is never a doubt or hesitation when a medical need arises in the correctional setting.”

The suit filed states that Ohlwine’s medical care was negligent and deliberately indifferent to Ohlwine’s suicidal tendencies. 

Jon Ohlwine told police officers who arrested him during the September 12 mental health crisis that he was schizophrenic. Released body cam video shows officers tasing him and mocking him, something that bothers Trisha Ohlwine every time she thinks about it.

"The laughing. It was an hour and a half for sure and it never stopped," she said.

Ohlwine in his booking photo September 12, 2023

Once he was arrested and charged with battery of a law enforcement officer and blocking traffic, he was taken to the Downtown Lutheran Hospital. Trisha Ohlwine has hundreds of pages of medical records she believes could have been checked, but the nursing staff and the police ignored his diagnosis, she said.

At the hospital, he was treated with benadryl 25, haldol 5 mg and atavin 2 mg, all of which served to sedate him. Once it wore off, Trisha Ohlwine said he plunged into a deeper psychosis.

"It all wore off and he was just completely out of his mind. They only gave him those meds to throw him in jail," she says.

The illness had progressed to the point he found it difficult to function. Through her efforts, Ohlwine had been accepted on to disability on the first try, she said.

At the jail, he was placed into the general population instead of getting treatment from a mental health specialist or placed on a special watch or properly supervised, the lawsuit states.

Trisha Ohlwine believes he wouldn’t have taken his own life had he been properly supervised because he was well known in the law enforcement community.

The lawsuit claims that jail officials basically ignore inmates with serious medical needs and not just her former husband.

Language in the filing notes that Ohlwine and her attorney, Jon Olinger, have yet to hear from the defendants even though a tort claim was filed on April 8, 2024 and “have had more than 90 days to investigate the claim.”

All parties are due in court Oct. 15 in front of Allen Superior Court Judge Craig Bobay for a case management conference. 

Trisha Ohlwine and, by extension, her two children, are suing for damages due to economic losses, mental and emotional distress, and wrongful death that includes medical, funeral and burial expenses, administrative costs for his estate, lost earnings and reasonable attorneys’s fees.

Carolyn Trier, a local attorney who often represents law enforcement in these types of cases, has been assigned to represent the FWPD officials named in the lawsuit.

County attorney Spencer Feighner is not named in court documents, but is normally counsel for this type of litigation and will likely represent the Allen County Sheriff and other county officials.

Another filing Thursday names IOM Health System LLC aka downtown Lutheran Hospital and Quality Correctional Care in a complaint sent to the Chief Deputy Commissioner at the state’s Department of Insurance in Indianapolis.

It serves as a notice that the two medical providers were negligent in their care. The complaint is another step in the suit, Ohlwine said.