Within hours of each other overnight, two jail inmates died in unrelated incidents while in custody at separate facilities the metro area, authorities said.
One inmate, whose name is being withheld pending notification of his next of kin, died early Thursday morning after he was arrested in Fulton County for violating his probation and was being transferred to DeKalb County, according to DeKalb Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Adrion Bell.
DeKalb deputies had stopped at the South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail in Union City to pick up inmates when the trouble became apparent, Bell said. “He collapsed outside the facility around 2:20 a.m. on the way to the men’s room,” Bell said.
Union City police and paramedics were called, and the man was taken to South Fulton Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 3:30 a.m., authorities said. The cause of his death was unclear.
In the other incident, Fulton County jail staffers found a 24-year-old male inmate unresponsive just before 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Rice Street facility in northwest Atlanta. After jail staff called paramedics and attempted to revive the inmate, he was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The inmate also hadn’t been named as of Thursday afternoon as prison officials attempt to notify his family.
Atlanta police were called to investigate the death, as a part of standard procedure, and determined the inmate committed suicide, Fulton County Sheriff's office spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan told Channel 2 Action News.
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