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| Jail incident officially ruled a homicide |
| By Hickory Daily Record |
| Published: 09/29/2004 |
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Ricardo Garza died of complications arising from an injury he sustained while in county custody, officials said Tuesday. Autopsy results for Garza, the 29-year-old inmate who died Saturday at the Catawba County (N.C.) jail, were released Tuesday. He had been strapped in a restraining chair for about three hours when a jailer discovered he wasn't breathing and lacked a pulse. Garza suffered a compression-type fracture to one of his ribs, Sheriff David Huffman said at a news conference Tuesday. The rib punctured Garza's chest cavity near the lung, causing internal bleeding and interfering with the inmate's ability to breathe. A compression fracture is one caused by steady pressure rather than a forceful blow. Eddie Pippen, assistant to the county medical examiner, said Garza died from a combination of lung failure and internal loss of blood. The death was officially ruled a homicide, Pippen said. He added that homicide doesn't imply murder, only that another person caused the death. The State Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation to determine how Garza's rib was broken. |
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