Another Parchman inmate was found deceased in his prison cell early Wednesday morning, the second in just a few days believed to be caused due to suicide.
According to Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton, she received a call just before 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning from Mississippi Department of Corrections security at Parchman “advising of the death of a Unit 29 inmate.”
“I arrived at Parchman Hospital ER at 11:36 a.m. and began my investigation into the death,” Burton said in a release this week.
The inmate was discovered by guards hanging in his cell, Burton said, and he was cut down and CPR was administered immediately.
Medical staff was notified, and CPR continued for 15 minutes with no success, the release said.
The offender was pronounced dead at 10:47 a.m. by Miranda Shegog, FNP-BC, Burton said.
“The offender was in a single man cell when this hanging occurred,” she said.
Until 2019, Parchman averaged two suicides per year, according to an article from the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, but that number spiked to five in 2019.
According to the article, published earlier this month, the rise in suicides could be linked to the sharp decline in guard labor at the prison.
MDOC’s overall correctional officer tally dropped from 1,591 in 2014 to 731 recently, and Parchman was recently authorized to hire 512 guards but only filled 261 of those jobs, MCIR said in its article.
