A 60-year-old man booked into Duval County Jail last month on fentanyl trafficking and DUI charges has died after being found unresponsive in his cell, marking another in-custody death publicized at the facility in recent months. Thomas Michael Trefzer was pronounced dead at a local hospital after Jacksonville Fire Rescue responded to his cell and transported him for emergency care.
According to Action News Jax, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is investigating the in-custody death, and detectives are currently treating the incident as a natural death. Trefzer had been in custody at the John E. Goode Pretrial Detention Facility since September 16, when he was arrested on charges including fentanyl trafficking, DUI, and other traffic-related offenses. The Medical Examiner's Office will provide final findings on the cause and manner of death.
That determination is not optional. Under Florida Statutes Section 406.11, the District Medical Examiner must assume jurisdiction and determine the cause of death when someone dies in police custody or inside a prison or penal institution, but the statute does not automatically require a full autopsy in every case, according to Online Sunshine. Until that process concludes, the sheriff's office's early read that Trefzer's death was natural remains a working theory rather than an official ruling, and it leaves open whether detox protocols or underlying medical conditions played any role during his roughly two-week detention.
A Pattern of Deaths in a Short Window
Trefzer's death was among at least four publicized in-custody deaths at Duval County Jail since June 2026. On July 19, 40-year-old inmate Christopher James Lumpkin died at the facility while being monitored under drug-detoxification protocols while awaiting transfer to Clay County, Hoodline previously reported. Weeks earlier, on June 5, 42-year-old inmate Omar Sims died at a local hospital after experiencing medical distress inside his cell, an incident JSO investigated with no foul play suspected, per First Coast News.
The back-to-back deaths arrive even as the jail's healthcare system has shown measurable improvement in recent years. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters and Mayor Donna Deegan terminated a $98 million inmate healthcare contract with Armor Correctional Health Services in July 2023 following inmate deaths and undisclosed criminal convictions tied to the vendor, replacing it with NaphCare under a $110 million contract, according to News4JAX.
Fewer Deaths, But Scrutiny Persists
During its first full year operating under NaphCare in 2024, the jail reported a more than 50% reduction in inmate deaths compared to annual totals under its previous healthcare provider, according to The Florida Trib. That improvement followed years of litigation and public outcry over medical care inside the facility. The family of 54-year-old inmate Dexter Barry filed a federal lawsuit against Sheriff Waters in February 2024, alleging Barry died from organ rejection after jail staff failed to administer his required daily heart transplant medication during a two-day stay in November 2022, WUSF reported.
Trust in the jail's handling of in-custody incidents has also been tested by cases involving alleged violence rather than illness. In April 2025, nine Duval County Jail corrections officers were reassigned following an incident that left 31-year-old inmate Charles Faggart brain dead, after hospital records obtained by journalists contradicted early JSO statements by documenting facial fractures, organ damage, and taser barbs, News4JAX reported. Community members have continued demanding surveillance footage and answers in that case, including at a rally Hoodline covered a year after Faggart's death.
JSO has also faced financial liability tied to inmate welfare failures beyond medical neglect. In January 2025, Sheriff Waters and the sheriff's office settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the family of a mother of five who died by suicide inside the pretrial detention facility following unaddressed suicide attempts, per the same Florida Trib report cited above. That settlement, along with the Barry and Faggart cases, has kept pressure on JSO to demonstrate that reforms implemented since the 2023 vendor change are holding.
Open Questions as Toxicology Pending
No cause has been confirmed in Trefzer's death, and the sheriff's office has offered no further detail beyond characterizing it as a natural death pending the medical examiner's toxicology and post-mortem findings.
For now, the Medical Examiner's Office investigation remains the determining factor in how Trefzer's death will ultimately be classified. Until that process concludes, the sheriff's office's natural-death assessment stands as a preliminary finding rather than a final answer for a facility still working to show that recent reforms have changed its track record.
