Yes he was. Strangulation of his short-term girlfriend a few years ago.
Qadgop_the_Mercotan:
I’ve overseen hundreds of inmate mortality reviews, including many where someone was unexpectedly found dead. Usually the autopsy will reveal a cause, like sudden internal hemorrhage or massive blood clot or large MI. Sometimes we find the patient riddled with previously undiagnosed metastatic cancer, which often precipitates a severe hemorrhage or clot.
When the autopsy shows little, I wait for the toxicology report to come back. This can take weeks to get. Often we find illicit drugs in the system, smuggled in or diverted from other inmate patients. We’ve traced certain drug ingestions by inmates having their source in being sent watercolor paintings from their kids. The paint had dissolved buprenorphine or fentanyl in it. The inmate appreciated the art, then ate it, then got a buzz, sometimes a fatal one.
But on infrequent occasions, the death is due to inmate on inmate violence. Usually though, evidence of such an occurrence is pretty obvious to officers, and even more so to the coroners.
I’m no security expert, but I do know that in a maximum security institution an inmate might be left strictly alone for up to 6 hours. Sometimes the official “count” (done 3 to 4 times a day where each inmate must stand and be accounted for) has 6 hour or longer intervals in between counts. If the inmate appears to be sleeping in his bunk in between counts the officer will not go check to see if he’s alive without a reason. I’m sure there’s similar windows of time in medium security institutions, where the monitoring isn’t as strict.
Sometimes no certain cause is found. Both in prison and in the real world, relatively young and healthy people sometimes turn up dead and the answer is not clear as to why.
I’m sorry for the loss of your friend.
Thank you.
As stated in one of my replies, the cellmate allegedly confessed. They found our “offender” on his stomach with cording from the fan wrapped a couple of times around his neck and around the railing of his bunk. He was face down.
The timeline as disclosed in what I saw, fit. Last inspection at 9:44. Ambulance at 10:15, TOD 11:21.
I was just perplexed how he could have stayed in one position, through supper, at least 6 hours without anyone saying/seeing a thing.
Broomstick:
Life isn’t a novel or TV show.
Generally killing someone leaves evidence, and it appears there was none at autopsy. And just because a guy is put in prison for murder doesn’t mean he’s hungering to do it again. I can understand the cellmate being viewed with suspicion, but if the authorities thought he’d killed his cellmate wouldn’t they be prosecuting him for another murder?
The recent poster who resurrected this zombie seems to think there was some sort of neglect, foul play, wrong-doing, or other bad thing occurring.
Actually, the cellmate was serving time for strangling his girlfriend.
casdave:
All our prisoners are observed a number of times per night, which means they will sometimes block up their observation panels, and that’s a disciplinary issue.
If they are ‘at risk’ prisoners then an assessment will be made to decide how often they need to be observed and what protocols will be involved, and this works its way right up to constant observation.
Unless this person has specific risk issues then there is no reason to increase the frequency of observations, however it seems really unusual that a two prisoner cell has an unobserved death for 6 hours, especially since it seems this would have been even longer if the alarm had not been raised.
The time of death seems pretty odd to me, since prisoners would likely still at work, and would have to return from work. There would have been a post work roll check. I would have imagined that in a 2 person cell that the other prisoner would have been awake and watching tv, and depending upon the prison regime lock-up would have been later than this - there are usually a number of after work activities that go on until around 19:00 and it means an eyes on head check must be done some time after that time.
In short, I am a bit surprised that the incident was not noted much sooner - which is not to say it should not have happened - answers about cause would come from the autopsy.
Thank you.
We have been trying to keep positive with no accusations regarding the facility or staff. The report I saw stated nothing about him being deceased for at least 6 hours and that news actually startled me. I had just assumed facial protrusions due to the strangulation and lividity, not rigor mortis. Again, this hasn’t been stated in any “official” statement/report to the family.
We’re awaiting the toxicology reports. I get the timeline for autopsies, toxicology findings, and inquests. My father was county coroner for 24 years. I’m just very unfamiliar with penal guidelines/protocol/routines.
I appreciate everyone weighing in one this and allowing an old topic to be, once again, discussed.
DrDeth
July 19, 2018, 6:44pm
65
Yes, but there is often added in “hard labor” (road work, breaking rocks) as opposed to say, making license plates.