A 54-year-old man was found unresponsive inside his cell at the Snohomish County Jail around 10:13 a.m. on Sunday, three days after Everett police officers booked him on suspicion of drug possession. Detention and medical staff rushed to attempt lifesaving measures, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The man had been booked into the jail on Oct. 29 on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance and a violation of a stay-out-of-drug-area order, according to HeraldNet. A corrections deputy discovered him while assisting a nurse with medication rounds and approached the cell before finding him unresponsive, as reported by myeverettnews.com. Resuscitation attempts by staff were ultimately unsuccessful, per deputies cited by FOX 13 Seattle.
Two Separate Inquiries Now Underway
The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit has launched an investigation into the death, a standard step whenever someone dies in county custody. Separately, an independent clinical review board will conduct what the state calls an unexpected fatality review, examining the death from a clinical standpoint rather than a criminal one. The same HeraldNet report notes that this fatality review is independent of the Major Crimes Unit's death investigation, meaning the two processes will run on parallel but separate tracks.
The Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office will determine both the man's positive identification and the official cause and manner of death, which remain unknown pending that examination. Under Washington law, these reviews cover deaths that did not result from a diagnosed or documented terminal illness, or another debilitating or deteriorating illness or condition for which death was anticipated, including deaths of people in the custody of a city or county corrections department, according to the Washington State Department of Health. State law also specifies that such reviews cannot be used to force a jail to disclose information it determines would reveal security details about the facility, per the Washington State Legislature.
Third In-Custody Death In County Jails Since Spring
Recent In-Custody Deaths
Just two weeks before Sunday's death, a 48-year-old woman was found dead in her cell at the Lynnwood Community Justice Center, which the Lynnwood Times described as the second in-custody death the Lynnwood jail has seen in five years. That woman had been taken into custody on Oct. 15 on DUI- and theft-related offenses. Staff attempted life-saving measures until South Snohomish County Fire took over, but she could not be revived.
A Snohomish County report identified as 2022-3811 was published April 3, 2023. Washington's unexpected fatality review process includes submitting reports to the state. No findings or timeline have been released yet for Sunday's case, and officials have not disclosed the man's identity pending confirmation by the medical examiner's office.
