Juan Salazar-Lopez Dies in Arkansas’ Sebastian County Detention Center
Forty-eight-year-old Juan Manuel Salazar-Lopez died in the custody of the Arkansas’ Sebastian County Detention Center on June 19, 2025. He was booked into the jail on May 5, 2025, on a charge of allegedly driving while intoxicated. Per a June 25 press release, no foul play was suspected. The Arkansas State Police (ASP) was tasked with leading the investigation into Mr. Salazar-Lopez’s death.
The address of Sebastian County Detention Center is 801 S A St, Fort Smith, AR 72901. The jail’s maximum bed capacity is 356.
An Inmate’s Tragic 2021 Death After Incarceration in Sebastian County Detention Center
Sebastian County Detention Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas, had been under federal oversight for years when the shocking death of 51-year-old Larry Eugene Price, Jr. occurred. Mr. Price had been in the jail for over a year when he was pronounced deceased on August 29, 2021, amidst allegations that he had been starved to death. His autopsy showed that his cause of death was acute dehydration and malnutrition.
It was discovered that overcrowding was routine at Sebastian County Detention Center in the years surrounding Mr. Price’s death. Also, he had been in the jail for the lack of $100 bail. Mr. Price suffered from mental illness and had been denied treatment at the jail.
A Study Reveals Many Jail Deaths Have Been Kept Off Official Records
Jails have requirements when custodial deaths occur, such as reporting them in a timely manner. Not only are custodial death reports often misleading with regard to how inmates’ deaths occur, but sometimes the deaths aren’t reported at all. An investigative study showed that in 2022 in Pennsylvania, at least 25 custodial deaths were kept off the records by the jails where the deaths had occurred.
The investigative report alleges that it has long been a strategy for jails to release inmates from custody just before they die, believing that this circumvented their legal obligation to file a report about the death with state officials. In some cases, the reporting responsibilities about jail deaths were habitually shirked.
Deaths Go Widely Unreported at Rikers Island in New York City
An analysis of data between 2014 and July 2023 revealed that at Rikers Island, only 68 of 120 jail deaths were reported. Evidence emerged that the jail apparently made a practice of releasing inmates from custody a few hours prior to their deaths. This was allegedly an apparent effort to keep deaths off the “department’s count.” It was disheartening that, in the midst of this expose’, the mayor’s administration announced that the jails would no longer notify the media about in-custody deaths.
The primary address for Rikers Island is 1500 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370. The jail system is comprised of several individual facilities, those being Benjamin Ward Visit Center, North Infirmary Command, Otis Bantum Correctional Center, and Anna M. Kross Center.
In West Virginia, a Jail is Accused of Inmate Death Cover-Ups
Within two recent years, 14 people died in Southern Regional Jail (SRJ) in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Families have made allegations that those who run the jail are hiding information about the custodial deaths of their loved ones. The address of Southern Regional Jail is 1200 Airport Rd, Beaver, WV 25813.
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