Woman Wants Answers After Brother Injured At Tulsa County Jail

A Tulsa woman is pleading for answers after she says her brother was hurt at the Tulsa County Jail and had to be taken to the hospital.

She has no idea what happened, or how he's doing now, but the Tulsa County jail said it only notifies family members if an inmate has died or is very near death.

The jail calls it protocol, but Trini Brown calls it unfair. She said it’s hard to talk about her brother right now.

"I immediately called his children…I’m sorry," she said, with tears in her eyes.

Her brother, 61-year-old Torhres Busby, is in the hospital and she doesn't know why.

All she knows is what a nurse at Saint Francis Hospital told her Friday: her brother fell at the jail, got a brain hemorrhage and a neurosurgeon had to get involved.

"Did he have a stroke, and fall? Did he slip on something and hit maybe a bar? Did he get beat up? What? We just want to know. That's all," Brown said.

Busby was arrested in 2014 for possessing and making drugs in Okmulgee County.

Brown said he was about to be released from a halfway house last month, but, during that process, authorities found an old arrest from 2000 - Busby had used a bogus check - so they put him in the Tulsa County jail.

A few weeks later, Brown called the jail to check on him and they told her he wasn't there.

It took her several more calls to find out he'd been hurt and taken to the hospital, but no one will tell her what happened, and no one, even Busby's children, is allowed to see him.

Brown said, "From my understanding, only if they die do they contact you. That's not right. I can't imagine someone dying alone, that's just not right."

The sheriff's office said only if the inmate dies or is about to die will the jail notify family due to the HIPAA law.

They say family is not allowed to see the inmate at the hospital because it's a security risk.

"But he is somebody's son, somebody's dad. He's a brother. He's a nephew. Why is it so hard to just let us know the injuries," Brown asked.

We tried calling the hospital, they said they had no information on the patient.

In an interview with The Frontier late Monday, Sheriff Vic Regalado described the jail as “a small country” where people sometimes become ill, get injured, try to harm themselves or die.  “You have mental illness and then you have those that make poor choices in David L. Moss. Although we do our best … things are going to happen. I wish we could prevent every single incident in the jail,” he said.

The Frontier has a more in-depth story here.