Detroit woman forced to give birth on dirty jail floor after her arrest on a traffic violation

A Michigan woman is slamming local law enforcement officials because she was forced to give birth on a dirty jail cell floor after she was arrested for driving with a suspended license.

WDIV-TV reports that Detroit metropolitan area resident Jessica Preston went into labor while she was in custody at the Macomb County Jail on $10,000 bond after being pulled over and found driving with an expired license.

Security camera footage released by the prison shows Preston, who could not afford to post bond, went three separate times to ask staff at the jail to take her to a local hospital, but each time the staff rejected her pleas.

"They didn't believe her," Linda Preston, Jessica's mother, told WDIV-TV. "They just left her lay there. They didn't care. They just kept saying she wasn't having the baby, and I don't know how anybody could say when she was bleeding, 'You're not having a baby,' and that they didn't send her to the hospital. Who makes that call?"

Preston gave birth to her son, Elijha, eight months into her pregnancy. At birth, he weighed in at under five pounds, and WDIV-TV notes that "the delivery was dangerous for him and his mother."

The Macomb County Jail has come under fire after two inmates recently died behind bars after the jail's staff similarly refused to take them to a hospital.

Watch the local news report on the incident below.