Two inmate deaths under investigation

Officials are waiting to learn what led to the recent deaths of two inmates in separate state prisons, a spokesman for the Department of Correction said.

Robert White, 42, was discovered dead March 10 by staff members at the Ouachita River Correctional Unit in Malvern, and 29-year-old Randall Myers was found unresponsive in his cell early Monday at the Varner Unit in Grady, according to prisons spokesman Solomon Graves. Prison officials said White’s death appears to have been suicide.

The Arkansas State Police agency is investigating the deaths, spokesman Bill Sadler said. State correction officials will conduct internal inquiries as well.

The bodies of White and Myers have been sent to the state Crime Laboratory, Sadler said. He declined further comment on the investigation.

Three deaths have been reported at Department of Correction facilities this year. The state police agency is investigating all three, Sadler said.

Kermit Channell, executive director at the Crime Lab, said autopsies can take up to 30 days. The lab prioritizes autopsies related to jail deaths and tries to complete them within 15 days, he said.

Graves said it is too early to know if the most recent deaths are connected to the use of K2, a synthetic drug that mimics marijuana and has become a problem throughout in the nation’s prison systems.

Overdoses were suspected in five inmate deaths in a four-day period in August at the Varner Unit. About a dozen others were treated for suspected drug-related illness around the same time at the maximum-security facility, officials said.

The August deaths led Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, chairman of the legislative Subcommittee on Charitable, Penal and Correctional Institutions, to call for an outside, independent audit of the state’s prison system.

Graves said Wednesday that K2 use in state prisons appears to be trending downward.

“In 2017, the department experienced an average of 95 K2-related incidents each month,” Graves said. “That number has been reduced to an average of 44 incidents per month through the first two months of 2019.”