26-year-old is Oklahoma County jail's first inmate death of 2023
Isiah Mitchell ended up in the Oklahoma County jail Friday afternoon after an Oklahoma City police officer spotted him riding a bicycle the wrong way on a street.
By Monday, he was dead.
The jail's interim administrator told jail trustees Monday that the detainee was pronounced deceased at a hospital at 1:21 a.m.
Mitchell, 26, of Oklahoma City, was found hanging in his cell at 12:02 a.m. during a sight check, Maj. Brandi Garner wrote in her email notification. He had been in the cell alone.
The inmate death was the first at the Oklahoma County jail in 2023 and the second since Garner was named interim administrator last month.
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The jail has had close to 40 inmate deaths since a trust took over operations on July 1, 2020. Sixteen of those deaths came last year.
The last jail administrator, Greg Williams, resigned in December amid criticism over the high death toll. His final day was Jan. 19.
Garner has pledged to make reducing jail deaths her main focus.
"Please understand this isn’t just a job for me — it's a calling," she wrote in a Jan. 15 guest column for The Oklahoman. "And once I set a goal, I’m going to make sure it happens, whatever it takes."
Mitchell was jailed after his traffic stop Friday because he was wanted in Garfield County. A judge there in 2016 issued a warrant for his arrest on a misdemeanor charge of driving while impaired.
The jail described his death in a news release as an apparent suicide.
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"I reviewed his booking paperwork including the intake questionnaire required to be completed by the arresting officer," Garner wrote in her email. "The questionnaire did not indicate Mr. Mitchell had expressed suicidal ideations, was not under the influence, and exhibited no signs of mental illness or acute medical conditions."
Ironically, Mitchell said on the drive to jail that he "was happy that I kept him from making a very bad decision," the arresting officer wrote in an incident report.
He said he had been on his way to buy fentanyl, according to the report.
The death sparked new outrage on social media about jail conditions. The jail disputed a Facebook post that claimed Mitchell had been complaining about needing a nurse for hours and was ignored.
After deaths, failed health inspections,Oklahoma County jail changing intake process
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma County jail reports first inmate death of 2023
