Inmate dies from fall, second recent death
MILPITAS >> A minimum-security inmate at the Elmwood Correctional Complex has died from injuries he suffered in an apparent two-story fall earlier this week, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators have said they do not believe that the inmate, a 35-year-old Cupertino man who was being held for a low-level offense, was the victim of foul play.
“Preliminary indicators of the investigation are the individual jumped from the second-story stairwell for the purpose of talking his own life or accidentally fell from the stairwell,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
The inmate who died is not being named by this news organization because he is a possible suicide victim.
The Sheriff’s Office said the fall was not captured surveillance video. The dorm-style housing area is the least-restrictive custody setting in the county and allows relatively free movement within its confines.
Deputies reported that the man was unconscious and not breathing when they found him, and along with in-house medical staff tried to resuscitate him before he was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
He had been in custody since May 28.
The man is the second Elmwood inmate to suffer fatal injuries recently. On May 16, authorities say Edward James Davis Jr., 62, died from his injuries after he was beaten unconscious by cellmate Joshua Carter, 28, in their locked cell in the M-5 housing unit.
Carter, who was being held on a misdemeanor DUI warrant in Contra Costa County, was arrested in the attack, for which a motive is unclear.