For the third time in less than a week, an inmate at a metro Atlanta jail died while in-custody.
The inmate was found unresponsive in his cell at the Coweta County Jail by another inmate Monday evening, the GBI said in a news release.
“Medical personnel attempted to revive him, but (he) was pronounced dead at the scene,” GBI assistant agent in charge Chris DeMarco said in the release.
The 23-year-old inmate had been in the jail since Coweta County authorities arrested him June 26, after an “extensive car chase,” GBI officials said. At the time, the inmate had been on the run from authorities after he escaped the Cherokee County Detention Center in Gaffney, S.C., on June 19.
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He was booked in the Coweta County Jail on charges of fleeing from police, aggravated assault, theft by receiving stolen property, giving false name to officers, DUI, suspended license, and identity fraud, according to the GBI. The inmate also had active holds in North Carolina and South Carolina.
An autopsy was scheduled for Wednesday.
The death comes just days after a DeKalb County jail inmate died of an apparent suicide hours after his arrest, officials said.
Officers were performing security checks when they found the 26-year-old Stone Mountain man unresponsive inside his cell early Monday, DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Cynthia Williams said.
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Emergency medical personnel performed life-saving efforts, but the inmate was pronounced dead at the scene, Williams said. The cause of death has not been released.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution does not identify people who died by suicide.
And on Thursday, Brice Turner died just hours after Woodstock police arrested him, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. He was booked in the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center near Canton on charges of possession of methamphetamine, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and crossing guard lines with drugs.
Turner, 33, of Woodstock, was placed in a holding cell but required medical attention during the booking process, Cherokee County sheriff’s Sgt. Marianne Kelley told The AJC. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
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In the past decade, more than 500 inmates and detainees in the state’s local jails in the past decade, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Channel 2 Action News and the Georgia News Lab.
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