Probe of suspected child killer’s suicide closed
SANTA FE — The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office closed its investigation Tuesday into the jailhouse suicide of suspected child killer Thomas Ferguson and said that Ferguson left a suicide note saying he was innocent in the killing of 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia.
Meanwhile, Santa Fe County government, which runs the jail, is defending the jail’s process for screening inmates, and providing medical and behavioral health services, adding that inmates who wish to harm themselves will find a way to do so. The county had said previously that Ferguson was not on suicide watch.
Ferguson, accused of torturing and killing Jeremiah at a Nambé home in late November, was found hanging by a bedsheet from a window in his cell at the Santa Fe County jail Friday night and was later pronounced dead.
Ferguson left what SFCSO spokesman Juan Rios called a suicide note that said he was innocent in Jeremiah’s death, and also expressing disdain for law enforcement
and the judicial system. “Essentially, he indicates that he’s harming himself because of the position he’s in in the Jeremiah Valencia homicide case,” Rios said. Rios did not give additional details of what was in the note and said it will be used as evidence in Jeremiah’s homicide case.
Investigators have cited Facebook messages as evidence that Jordan Nunez, 20, Ferguson’s son and part of the same household, may have played a role in killing Jeremiah, the son of Ferguson’s girlfriend.
Santa Fe County spokeswoman Kristine Mihelcic released a statement late Monday saying that the county jail “screens approximately 8,000 inmates annually.”
“Our Behavioral Health team addresses suicide prevention, along with other medical and behavioral health issues, for inmates within our facility,” the statement said. “We have a licensed psychiatrist, as well as other medical personnel with behavioral health training.” The statement said jail staff are trained in behavioral health “and keeping inmates safe and secure,” and that the facility has policies aimed at “preventing self-harm.”
“Despite the best of intentions and practices with respect to suicide prevention, occasionally an individual who decides to self-harm within a detention and correctional facility will commit selfharm. This is an ongoing investigation and there are questions that we cannot yet answer.”
An incident report for Ferguson’s death released Tuesday by the sheriff’s office says Deputy Oliver McCartney was dispatched to the jail at 11:16 p.m. on Friday and was led to a segregated unit where Ferguson was being held.
Jail officers and nursing staff were giving CPR to Ferguson and an ambulance crew joined in. Medics called a hospital doctor who advised to stop life-saving measures because Ferguson wasn’t showing signs of life, the report says.
McCartney found that a security observation log showed that Ferguson had been visually checked at 10:47 p.m. Jail guard Enrique Ortega said he was doing a mandatory check on Ferguson at 11:16 p.m. when saw Ferguson hanging by the sheet from a piece of metal attached to a window.
Santa Fe District Court Judge T. Glenn Ellington on April 11 had ordered Ferguson to be transferred to a state prison after the judge found him guilty of absconding from probation in a 2014 sexual assault and kidnapping case. It was only on Thursday, 15 days later, that the Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office filed the judge’s order, which required that Ferugson be taken by the sheriff’s office to the Central New Mexico prison in Los Lunas.
Rios said the sheriff’s office got the order around 3 p.m. Friday. Ferguson was found dead later that night. District Attorney Marco Serna said it’s typical to take 15 days to file a court order. He said his office has to draft it, get it signed by the defense attorney and then get it approved by the judge. “Ten to 15 days, that’s common,” he said.