Gilbert Shaw Medina was booked into Collin County Jail in McKinney, Texas, on December 8, 2021. On February 11, 2022, at 12:07 PM, he was discovered in his single cell with a ligature around his neck. Mr. Medina, age 32, was pronounced dead 21 minutes later.

Custodial death reports filed with the Office of the Texas Attorney General show a shocking trend in February 2022. The death of Mr. Medina marks a custodial suicide on the third day in a row in Texas county jails this month. In the Travis County Jail in Austin, Texas, Jared Jon Bell committed suicide on February 9, 2022. On February 10, 2022, Simon Peter Douglas committed suicide in Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas.

Numerous experts say that the majority of custodial suicides are considered to be preventable. Even more tragic than these recent suicides is the fact that this type of pattern of suicide activity is not an isolated event. CNN reported on suicides in jails and prisons in summer of 2021 and included the statistic that five Texas custodial suicides occurred within a six-day period in April of last year. This statistic may have included Juan Carlos Diaz-Ortiz, who committed suicide in Bastrop County Jail in Bastrop, Texas, on April 29, 2021.

A Medical Examiner in a county outside Texas reported that suicides are on track to occur at a rate that is 60% higher than 2021 and 63% higher than 2020. Tragically, this could be indicative of an overall trend across the country.

Learn more in this continuing series.

Making implications that persons or entities have been involved in wrongdoing is never intended on this site. Providing helpful resources to inmates in Texas county jails is the purpose of this site’s posts.

–Guest Contributor