Attorneys on both sides of a federal lawsuit filed over the in-custody death of former Rhea County Executive George Thacker have agreed to mediate the case before a U.S. magistrate judge rather than go to trial.
The U.S. District Court in Aiken, South Carolina, issued an order Thursday appointing federal Magistrate Mary Gordon Baker, who had already agreed to hear the suit, to mediate the case as soon as February, according to a joint motion filed Dec. 16.
Thacker, Rhea County’s longest-serving county executive, was 59 when he died the day after Christmas in 2022 at the Federal Prison Camp at Edgefield, South Carolina. He was just days into a 33-month sentence on a wire fraud conviction for using coronavirus stimulus funds to invest in cryptocurrency. Edgefield, according to the prison website, is a medium security prison with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp about 20 miles north of Augusta, Georgia.
(READ MORE: US government denies role in Rhea County man’s in-custody death)
Thacker’s daughter and administrator of his estate, April Wesolowski, filed the wrongful death suit July 2, alleging Thacker was ill and had difficulty walking and was complaining to prison medical staff Dec. 25, 2022, of abdominal pain. But instead of performing an exam, medical tests or sending Thacker to the hospital, prison staff gave him ibuprofen and sent him back to his prison dorm, she alleged. The suit doesn’t seek a specific amount, but an amount to be determined by the court.