FORT WORTH, Texas — A 51-year-old inmate in the Tarrant County Jail died Monday, officials said, the latest in a string of inmate deaths in recent years at the jail.
According to the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office, the inmate had told jail staff he wasn't feeling well. Medical personnel at the jail examined him and called an ambulance to take him to John Peter Smith Hospital.
The inmate reportedly became unresponsive once the ambulance arrived, TCSO said, and life-saving measures immediately began.
Despite being resuscitated, officials said the man later died at the hospital Monday afternoon while being treated.
The man had been arrested on Sept. 10 and charged with multiple felony counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14, as well as two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
This death, as all in-custody deaths, will be investigated by jail staff, as well as the TCSO criminal investigations division, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner, hospital medical staff, the Texas Attorney General's office, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and an outside law enforcement agency.
Since first taking office in 2017, more than 60 jail deaths have occurred under Republican Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn. He was re-elected last month.
Inmate deaths in Tarrant County have exceeded the national average in each of the last four years, according to National Institutes of Health data.
In the last year, Tarrant County has spent more than $2 million to settle lawsuits related to the jail. Commissioners approved a record-breaking settlement in May.
Waybourn shared a report on the many deaths at the jail with Tarrant County commissioners last month to help explain the numbers. The report was conducted by the National Institute of Corrections.
“Forty-five of those have been natural deaths," Waybourn said. "You can see what they were from, cardiac cancer, HIV, that type of thing. Suicide, six suicides, seven from toxicity, alcohol or drug issues."
But one commissioner, Alisa Simmons, is still calling for a jail investigation by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
“If nothing is wrong, then his door should be open. He should not be emotional about a commissioner's request to have the DOJ come in to see what's right to determine what's wrong and to come up with solutions," Simmons said.