Bennie Ray Bell died in the custody of El Paso County Jail on July 24, 2022. Mr. Bell was 55 years old, and the Custodial Death Report (CDR) filled out by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office indicates that his cause of death was illness/natural causes. However, the specific cause of death is unknown and pending the results of an autopsy.

It appears El Paso County jails have not been cited by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) for non-compliance with minimum jail standards since 2017. Two separate Special Inspection Reports on El Paso jails in 2017 refer to non-compliance and in-custody deaths. A March 16, 2017, report references the death of inmate Norberto Santa Cruz. An October 30, 2017, report refers to the in-custody death of inmate Robert Gallegos.

Although no further citations against El Paso seem to have been made since 2017, there have been at least five jail deaths in El Paso County jails just since December 2021. That number doesn’t even take into account the recent death of Bennie Ray Bell.

The following are brief listings of five recent El Paso jail deaths, with more details to follow in this series:

• December 6, 2021, 35-year-old Eric Dominguez, illness
• December 6, 2021, 31-year-old Justin Joshua Flores, drug toxicity
• December 24, 2021, 23-year-old Brandon Pacheco Calzada, drug toxicity
• May 29, 2022, 39-year-old Andres Linares Baca, suicide
• February 23, 2022, 37-year-old Robert John Barela, suicide

Learn more in Part 1 and Part 2 of this continuing series.

Providing helpful resources for county and city jail inmates in Texas is the purpose of this website. Making implications of wrongdoing against people or entities is never intended on this site.

–Guest Contributor