The inmate was identified as 42-year-old Jason Hicks and he was being at Detention Center-Central on East Fourth Street in uptown Charlotte, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
A man being held in the Mecklenburg County Detention Center has died after experiencing a medical emergency the day after Christmas, according to sheriff’s office.
It’s the fourth in-custody death of 2025, the sheriff’s office says.
The man has been identified as 42-year-old Jason Hicks, and he was being held at Detention Center-Central on East Fourth Street in uptown Charlotte, the sheriff’s office said in a Dec. 26 news release.
“On Friday … at approximately 4:37 a.m., a medical emergency was called by a detention officer in the housing unit where Mr. Hicks was assigned,” a sheriff’s office statement said.
“After being evaluated by our medical provider, it was determined that Mr. Hicks required further medical care. At approximately 4:49 a.m., Mecklenburg EMS (MEDIC) arrived and transported Mr. Hicks to Atrium Health Main, where he was pronounced deceased at approximately 8:27 a.m.”
A cause of death was not released.
Mecklenburg County jail records show McCoy lived in Charlotte, and has been arrested twice in 2025, mostly recently on Dec. 19 on charges of felony larceny and habitual larceny, jail records show.
“Any loss is heartbreaking, and it can feel even heavier during the holidays. His next of kin has been notified, and we extend our condolences to his family and loved ones, with hopes they find comfort in the memories they shared with him,” Sheriff Garry McFadden said in a news release.
McCoy’s death is being investigated by the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation and the medical examiner will determine a cause of death, the sheriff’s office said.
Mark Price is a National Reporter for McClatchy News. He joined the network of newspapers in 1991 at The Charlotte Observer, covering beats including schools, crime, immigration, LGBTQ issues, homelessness and nonprofits. He graduated from the University of Memphis with majors in journalism and art history, and a minor in geology.
The central jail on Front Street in downtown San Diego. (File photo by Chris Stone)
A $16 million settlement has been reached between San Diego County and the family of a 22-year-old man who died in San Diego Central Jail three years ago.
The family’s attorneys pointed to the county’s failure to preserve 55 hours of surveillance footage capturing the area outside William Hayden Schuck’s jail cell as a major factor in the case’s resolution.
The agreement, believed to be the largest wrongful death settlement in San Diego County history, resolves a lawsuit filed by the family of Schuck, who died in March 2022.
That happened to also be one month after the California State Auditor released a scathing report on the high rate of in-custody deaths at San Diego County jails. The audit examined 185 deaths within the San Diego County jail system for more than a decade through 2020, a rate that was among the highest in the state over that period.
With the new settlement, the county will have paid out about $30 million in two years, connected to just two deaths. Other lawsuits are pending.
Attorneys representing the Schuck family say numerous deficiencies highlighted in the state’s report, such as inadequate safety checks of jail cells and delays in providing medical treatment, played direct roles in Schuck’s death from dehydration and drug toxicity.
During a Wednesday news conference announcing the settlement, the attorneys also said the deletion of the video footage likely played a role in the county settling the case. They had argued in court filings that the footage could have confirmed whether or not jail staff conducted safety checks of Schuck’s cell during a period when his health rapidly declined.
Timothy Scott, one of those attorneys, said a San Diego federal judge sanctioned the county and ruled that if the case had gone to trial, jurors would be instructed that they could be allowed to assume whatever was contained in the footage would have reflected badly on the county.
“I do think that faced with that kind of jury instruction at trial, it did make the county more willing to settle,” Scott said.
A statement issued by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday noted that Schuck died prior to Sheriff Kelly Martinez taking office in 2023. She was elected to her first full term in November 2022.
However, the department veteran had served as undersheriff, second in command at the office, since 2021.
In January 2022, weeks before the release of the audit, former Sheriff Bill Gore had announced that he would leave office early, on Feb. 3, 2022. The state released the jail audit that day.
“Since that time, significant improvements have been made to our jail system,” officials said in Wednesday’s statement. “Much more is needed, which will require significant investment from the county of San Diego.”
But the lengthy statement also pointed out that the settlement funds will come out of the Sheriff’s Office budget and the department “had no participation or input” on the county’s decision to settle.
Officials went on to cite results over the last year, during which San Diego County jails recorded the lowest number of in-custody deaths in more than a decade, with a 65% reduction in overdoses. There also were zero suicides in 2024, for the first time in more than 20 years.
“The Sheriff’s Office remains committed to learning from the past,” officials said near the conclusion of the statement, “while continuing forward progress and ensuring that past deficiencies are not repeated,”
That comes too late for Schuck, however, who was arrested on March 10, 2022 on suspicion of driving under the influence. He died less than a week later.
Attorneys say that upon his arrest, he displayed clear signs of intoxication and withdrawal that should have resulted in medical treatment, but he was instead placed in a cell without a mattress, where he was “forgotten” for days, according to attorney Michelle Angeles.
The day before his March 16 death, Angeles said he was found naked with sores on his body, while food and feces were strewn about his cell. During a court appearance that day, he was unable to even confirm his name, leading a judge to order that he be medically screened, according to the family’s lawsuit.
The Schucks’ attorneys say that medical screening never occurred.
The complaint states that despite the drugs found in his system after his death, there were no indications that he used drugs while in jail or had interactions with any other inmates prior to his death.
Along with the monetary component, Scott said the settlement includes an agreement to institute changes to the county’s training program for detention and correctional officers, though many of those proposed changes were being finalized.
The $16 million figure exceeds a $15 million settlement reached last year between the county and the family of Elisa Serna, who died in 2019 at the Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee.
A 2019 city law requires Rikers to close by 2027, but advocates renewed calls for its immediate shutdown after another man died in custody there on Wednesday
Photo by Dean Moses
A man died in custody at Rikers Island on Wednesday night after suffering what appeared to be a seizure, the city’s Department of Correction said. He is the 12th person to die in city custody this year and the fifth in the past two weeks, prompting a new round of outrage from advocates who want the correctional facility closed.
Correction Department officers at the George R. Vierno Center responded to a medical emergency at 7:49 p.m. on Sept. 3, according to the DOC. Medical staff and emergency services attempted to revive the man, but he was pronounced dead at 8:35 p.m.
“The department has tragically lost a person in our custody. We share our deepest sympathies with his loved ones. Every aspect of this incident will be investigated,” correction commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said in a statement.
Officials said the agency notified the federal monitor, the Board of Correction, the state attorney general’s office, the city Department of Investigation, the state Commission of Correction, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, and the city’s district attorneys.
The man’s name has not been released.
Rikers IslandFile photo/Dean Moses
The Sept. 3 death follows the case of 44-year-old Jimmy Avila, who died last week after an apparent medical emergency at the West Facility on Rikers Island. Another person incarcerated at Rikers died in custody on Aug. 23.
On Aug. 29, a 46-year-old man being held at Brooklyn Criminal Court was discovered unresponsive and later pronounced dead. A pedicab driver also died that day while in custody at the Midtown South Precinct.
In June, Rikers saw two people die in custody within about an hour of each other.
‘What’s it going to take?’
A statement from Freedom Agenda, an organization that supports decarceration, said 45 people have died in custody since Mayor Eric Adams took office and again called for Rikers’ closure alongside other justice advocates.
“Mayor Adams, how many more New Yorkers have to die at Rikers before you take action?” Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda, said in a statement. “Inaction and silence in the face of this humanitarian crisis is not only unacceptable, it is deadly. New York cannot allow this cycle of suffering to continue — the time for decarceration and the closure of Rikers is now.”
A 2019 city law requires Rikers Island to shut down by 2027, but whether that deadline will be met remains uncertain. The city has not completed construction of the four borough-based jails intended to replace the complex, and those projects have faced strong community opposition. In May, a federal judge ordered the appointment of an independent remediation manager to take over their operations.
Chief U.S. Judge Laura Taylor Swain set Aug. 29 as the deadline for all parties involved in the case to provide her a list of four recommended managers for her consideration to take on the role that is fully independent of the city and federal governments.
Jerome Wright, co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign and a former Rikers inmate, said in a statement that “the only answer is to free people, close these deathtrap jails, and build a system of equal justice that promotes healing and safety, not torture, despair, and death.”
“What’s it going to take? Five people have died in custody in the last two weeks,” Wright said. “Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul have doubled down on a racist system to lock up more and more people and leave them to die. The jail population has spiked by 33% since Mayor Adams took office. Sadly, they have had willing partners in local prosecutors and judges.”
Melanie Dominguez, organizing director at the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice, called the most recent death at Rikers “horrible” and argued the crisis “is getting worse.”
Dominguez said appointing a remediation manager to take over Rikers is a “necessary step,” but the process is too slow while “people are suffering and dying.”
She urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign a corrections oversight bill passed in June that would expand the State Commission of Correction’s authority.
“Lives are at stake and the crisis is only getting worse,” Dominguez said. “This is not the time to delay.”
The Alexandria Police Department released body camera footage of an incident during which a man being taken into custody Aug. 15 died suddenly.
Police body camera footage shows Allan Tucker’s arrest and subsequent death while in custody.(Courtesy Alexandria Police Department)
Police body camera footage shows Allan Tucker’s arrest and subsequent death while in custody.(Courtesy Alexandria Police Department)
The Alexandria Police Department released body camera footage of an incident during which a man being taken into custody Aug. 15 died suddenly.
The man, identified as 32-year-old Allan Tucker II, of Alexandria, had been reported by neighbors for causing a disturbance, running in the hallways and banging on doors. When police arrived on the scene in the 2800 block of N. Beauregard Street, they discovered Tucker in one of the apartment complex’s hallways.
Tucker told officers he believed someone was inside his apartment unit with a gun. But when police checked the unit, they only found Tucker’s father, who was in a wheelchair, a dog and no firearms in the residence.
Police took Tucker into custody on a public intoxication charge. In the video, an officer can be heard asking him, “What did you take today?” Tucker did not reply.
At a news conference on Friday, Alexandria Chief of Police Tarrick McGuire described the incident, saying responding officers tried to “de-escalate the situation” and get Tucker to go back inside his apartment, which he refused to do.
Tucker was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car, where McGuire said he continued acting in a “disorderly” manner by kicking and yelling and claiming officers were “reaching for a gun.”
Tucker can be heard in the video saying, “Are y’all trying to kill me? Y’all are trying to kill me, man. Why is your gun not in your holster?”
Police pulled into a “sally port,” a secure entry spot, before entering the Alexandria Adult Detention Center, around 6:10 p.m.
By 6:51 p.m., Tucker became unresponsive. While receiving medical assistance from officers and other personnel, Tucker died at the scene. No cause of death has been made public.
An internal investigation is underway by the regional Critical Incident Response Team.
You can see the body camera video below. Warning: The following video contains graphic imagery that may be unsuitable for certain audiences.
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The Tarrant County Jail on Tuesday, October 11, 2022.
Amanda McCoy
amccoy@star-telegram.com
An inmate died after he was pepper sprayed while fighting with detention officers at the Tarrant County Jail during a check for contraband, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
Anthony Johnson, 31, died just before 10 a.m. Sunday, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Jailers were conducting what the sheriff’s office called routine contraband checks in cells just before 9 a.m. Sunday morning when Johnson refused to exit his cell so it could be searched, according to the release. He began fighting with detention officers and they used the pepper spray “to assist in bringing the inmate under control,” the sheriff’s office said.
After he was pepper sprayed, Johnson was examined by John Peter Smith Hospital medical staff working at the jail and was not responsive, the release said.
Medical staff peformed CPR and Johnson was taken to JPS, where he died.
Johnson was arrested Friday by Saginaw police on charges of possession of a controlled substance in penalty group 1, tampering /fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair and evading arrest or detention and was taken to the Tarrant County Jail on Saturday, according to the release.
The sheriff’s office said Johnson was arrested after police responded to a call about a man standing in an intersection wielding a knife at a driver. When officers arrived, the sheriff’s office said he attempted to flee on foot.
A detention officer was also injured and was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The Texas Rangers will be leading the investigation.
The medical examiner’s office will determine the cause of death.
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James Hartley is a breaking news reporter with awards including features, breaking news and deadline writing. A North Texas native, he joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2019. He has a passion for true stories, understated movies, good tea and scotch that’s out of his budget.
