A 65-year-old man who had spent more than a year in custody at Mecklenburg County's Central jail has died at a Charlotte hospital, and the State Bureau of Investigation is now looking into his death. Christopher Green had been held at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center-Central on East Fourth Street since Aug. 9, 2025, before he was hospitalized late last month and ultimately died this week.
Hospitalized After Requesting a Medical Screening
Green was transported to Atrium Health Main on Oct. 29 after requesting a medical screening, according to qcnews.com. He died at the hospital on Monday, with his family by his side, according to a Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office release cited by QCity Metro. Officials said his hospitalization was not the result of any interaction with staff or other residents, and the sheriff's office said it cannot disclose further information about his health due to privacy laws.
Green had faced charges of firing into an occupied property and possessing a stolen firearm by a felon, and a magistrate had ordered him held without bond because of the nature of those charges, per the same account from the sheriff's office. The medical examiner's office is now working to determine his official cause of death, while the state's investigation proceeds separately.
Sheriff Offers Condolences, Praises Staff Response
Sheriff Garry McFadden expressed condolences to Green's family and said he was grateful they were able to be by his side in his final moments. “Every life entrusted to our care matters, and every custody death is treated with the seriousness it deserves,” McFadden said, according to the sheriff's office statement. He added that detention staff and medical partners recognized Green's needs and ensured he received hospital care, saying staff showed Green professionalism and compassion and that he stood behind the caregivers, noting that residents in custody deserve dignity and care, which he said staff provided.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office said it is cooperating with the State Bureau of Investigation as part of the in-custody death inquiry. It is the second such investigation involving the county's jail system this year. In August, 59-year-old Todd Williams died after being taken into custody about a week earlier, according to the sheriff's office announcement reported by WBTV. An officer found Williams unresponsive in his cell at the East Fourth Street jail around 8:55 a.m. that Sunday after he suffered a medical emergency; medics took him to a Charlotte hospital, where he died early the next morning. The cause of Williams' death was not immediately clear, and the SBI investigated that case alongside the sheriff's office as well.
A Statewide Pattern Under Scrutiny
Green's death adds to a broader pattern of in-custody fatalities tracked across North Carolina. State health officials reported 63 inmate deaths in the state's jails in 2023 — 46 of them in custody and 17 out of custody — down from 90 reported in 2022, according to Governing. Even with that decline, the annual death toll has remained well above the roughly 30 deaths reported about a decade earlier, and the state health department found that at least 19 of the 46 in-custody deaths in 2023 involved supervision failures.
More recent figures compiled by the Charlotte Observer show 81 North Carolina inmates died last year, 64 of them inside a jail and 17 while out of custody, with jail deaths dipping only slightly from 63 in 2023 to 62 in 2024. Mecklenburg County recorded four inmate deaths last year, the same number reported in Lincoln and Gaston counties, the Observer's report found. The medical examiner's office has not yet determined Green's official cause of death, and the outcome of the SBI's review has not been disclosed.
