The family of a woman who died in a Waseca federal prison has filed a lawsuit alleging the facility failed to provide proper medical care for weeks, despite doctors advising she needed emergency heart surgery.
Starsha Silva, 36, of Hawaii, was diagnosed with severe valvular heart disease on May 2, 2023 during a consultation with Mayo Clinic doctors, who recommended she undergo open heart surgery immediately before prison staff returned her to the Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca — a low-security facility where she was serving a 14-year sentence for a drug conviction.
The lawsuit alleges a Bureau of Prisons case manager blocked the operation from going forward because prison policy required two officers to oversee the procedure and no one was available.
Silva was escorted back to the prison where she experienced fatigue, shortness of breath and chest pain for the next three weeks, the lawsuit said. She made a request for compassionate release shortly after the doctor’s visit but did not receive a response, the attorneys said in the complaint.
On May 24, about three weeks later, Silva was told she was being transferred to a federal medical center in Texas but collapsed as she packed her belongings in her cell. She was pronounced dead at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, according to a letter the warden wrote to a federal judge in Hawaii. An autopsy ruled her cause of death as complications from severe heart disease.
The lawsuit is being litigated by attorneys from civil rights firm Loevy + Loevy along with the National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls. It names the Bureau of Prisons, the prison’s warden, the prison case manager, two prison doctors, five prison medical providers and 10 unnamed prison employees as defendants.
“Federal officials knowingly ignored that responsibility, and abandoned Starsha to weeks of suffering and a terrible, painful death,” said Maria Makar, an attorney representing Silva’s family. “The family deserves justice and answers for how the government could fail someone in their care so completely.”
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on the matter, citing the pending case.
The attorneys further allege the Waseca prison, located roughly 80 miles south of Minneapolis, housed women with medical needs beyond what the facility could handle, including Silva. The complaint references a 2023 report compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s office after a surprise visit, in which investigators concluded the prison was “generally well-run,” but noted “staff shortages in both FCI Waseca’s Health Services and Psychology Services Departments have caused delays in treatment of the physical and mental health care needs of inmates.”
Silva’s family is asking for compensatory damages for “conscious pain and suffering, wrongful death, and loss of familiar companionship.”