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| Inmate Follows Through on Threat to Hang Himself |
| By San Antonio Express-News |
| Published: 06/19/2003 |
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A Bexar County (Texas) Jail inmate who had told authorities he was going to kill himself was found in his cell last week hanging from a light fixture draped with a torn-up bed sheet, officials said. Officers and medics couldn't revive David Polk Jr., 21, who was being held in the jail's mental unit, Lt. Jim Rickhoff said. Polk was pronounced dead at 2:54 a.m. June 6 at the jail, according to an investigator at the medical examiner's office. The cause of death was suicide. He was placed in the mental unit, one of the most supervised areas in the jail, because 'he had made a statement about committing suicide,' Rickhoff said. The cell where he lived alone has a window on the door that doctors or jailers can peer through and a light fixture mounted flush with the wall, 51/2 feet from the floor. 'He managed to wedge the thinness of the sheet between the light fixture and the wall,' Rickhoff said. 'He attached it to his neck and hung himself. Pretty much case closed.' Asked how much time passed from the last check on Polk, Rickhoff said: 'It would have been a very brief period.' It appeared that he hanged himself from a sitting position, jail Capt. Dan Gabehart said. 'It struck me as unusual,' he said. Polk was being held on charges of robbery, sexual assault and capital murder. He and Shomari Graves - who is being held at the jail without bond - were arrested in Tarrant County days after the November strangling of Rogelio Juárez, 46, on San Antonio's West Side. Rickhoff said about 12 deaths occur per year at the jail, including suicides. 'You are putting 5,000 people in custody; things are going to happen,' he said. In state prisons, currently home to 147,992 inmates, there were 29 suicides and 408 attempted suicides in 2002, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. |
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