"Now My Legs Are Numb. I Can Not Walk. I Need to Go to the Hospital." Alaska's Highest-Security Prison Gave Him Ibuprofen for Six Days While a Spinal Infection Paralyzed Him.
After trial: A finalized settlement reached in June 2019, roughly two months before a scheduled trial, so the figure is final by construction and no cap was applied. The $2,000,000 shown is the state's total obligation: $1,800,000 paid to Tucker and about $200,000 in Medicaid liens the state agreed to satisfy separately, per Tucker's counsel; the conservative figure for his own recovery is $1,800,000. The judicial district is not named in the reporting. Collectability: the payer is the State of Alaska; no source reports the payment itself, so the disclosure stays at not public.
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In August 2015 Nicholas Tucker, a 37-year-old commercial fisherman from Ketchikan serving a sentence at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, developed a spinal cord infection. Over six days of written medical requests, a wheelchair trip to the clinic and notes recording severe radiating pain, staff gave him ibuprofen and a muscle relaxant. Other prisoners were moving him to the toilet and writing his requests for him by the time a nurse found he could not get out of his bunk. He was flown to Anchorage for emergency surgery and is permanently partially paralyzed. The State of Alaska settled in June 2019 for $1,800,000 plus $200,000 in Medicaid liens.
What happened
Nicholas Tucker was 37, a commercial fisherman from Ketchikan, serving a sentence at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, the highest-security prison in Alaska.
On August 6, 2015 he filed a written medical request for neck and back pain. He had to be taken to the medical department in a wheelchair. Notes from August 7 record ringing in his ears, an inability to eat, severe pain radiating from his neck down his back and into his elbows, and Tucker almost crying, slowly rocking back and forth. Staff gave him ibuprofen and a muscle relaxant.
Over the next four days he lost the use of his hands. Other prisoners moved him from his bed to the toilet and took over writing his medical requests. On August 10 he wrote: "My symptoms keep getting worse. Now my legs are numb. I can not move my head or legs. I can not walk. I need to go to the hospital."
On August 11 a nurse found he could not get out of his bunk. He was flown to Anchorage for emergency surgery. The infection in his spinal cord had gone untreated for six days, and he is permanently partially paralyzed.
He sued the Alaska Department of Corrections in Alaska Superior Court in 2017. With trial set for August 2019, the state settled in the first week of June: $1,800,000 to Tucker, and the state separately paying about $200,000 in Medicaid liens that had accrued from his treatment, so that the liens did not come out of his recovery.
John Cashion of Cashion Gilmore in Anchorage handled the case with Myron Angstman of Bethel. The Department of Corrections maintained publicly that prompt and proper medical attention had been given, and cited medical privacy law for declining to say more.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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