ISP to investigate suspect’s death

Fearful of being sent back to prison, a Boundary County man swallowed half an ounce to an ounce of methamphetamine while waiting inside a car during a traffic stop last weekend, family members said Monday.

Dale Allen Young, 42, wound up in jail anyway Friday night after being arrested by Bonners Ferry police on a drug possession charge. He then died Saturday morning of an apparent drug overdose, according to the Boundary County Sheriff.

Young’s wife, Terri Young, said she talked to her husband shortly before he was transferred from the jail to the hospital.

“He called me about 1:32 in the morning,” she said. “He told me, ‘Baby, I’m dying. I just wanted to tell you I love you and I’ll see you in my next life.’

“I said, ‘What happened?’

“He said, ‘I ate a lot of stuff. … They won’t take me to the hospital.’ “

Terri Young said she next talked to a jail employee who assured her that they were taking him to the hospital. She called back about 20 minutes later and learned her husband was at the hospital, but claims the jail employee told her she couldn’t go see him.

Two hours later, in another conversation with the jail, she was told that her husband’s stomach had been pumped and he was stable. Later in the morning, however, she was told by a sheriff’s deputy at the jail that he had died, she said.

“I’m devastated,” she said. “How could this happen?”

Boundary County Sheriff Greg Sprungl requested that the Idaho State Police investigate the death, and ISP Capt. Clark Rollins said it will be at least a couple of weeks – when autopsy results are expected back – before the investigation is complete. When it is, the ISP will turn its report over to the Boundary County prosecutor.

While Young’s family members are accusing authorities of deliberately letting Young die of an overdose, Rollins said, “So far, it appears that everything has been done above board on this.”

Sprungl said inmates at the jail are not restricted from getting medical attention. “We try our very best to run a good jail,” he said.

He said the family is making assumptions based on no information.

“I have limited information myself,” Sprungl said. “We invited an outside agency … to look into if we did what we were supposed to do. You can’t be any more open than that.”