An inmate at the Harris County jail charged with capital murder died Friday morning after hanging himself in his cell, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.
A detention officer found Maytham Alsaedy, 26, hanging by a bedsheet in his cell on the second floor of the 1200 Baker Street jail facility just before 11 p.m. Thursday, according to an HCSO news release.
The detention officer had noticed that Alsaedy had covered his cell window with newspaper.
Jail medical staff tried to revive Alsaedy, who was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph Medical Center, according to the release. The inmate was pronounced dead at 12:06 a.m. on Friday.
Sheriff's office spokesman Jason Spencer declined to comment on when detention officers had last checked on Alsaedy.
That's all part of the investigation," he said. "We'll look at the jail logs and compare them to video to make sure the logs are an accurate reflection of what's seen on video."
The Harris County Sheriff's Office's Homicide Unit and Office of Inspector General are both investigating the death, sheriff's officials said. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards has been notified of the suicide but has not yet received reports, said Executive Director Brandon Wood.
Authorities had charged Alsaedy with capital murder in the February 2015 slaying of Kella Bracken, 22, who was found stabbed to death in her car in the parking lot of a pizza restaurant in east Harris County. Officials had determined at the time she had been dead for two days.
The Harris County District Attorney's Office had announced in July that prosecutors intended to seek the death penalty in the case, but spokesman Dane Schiller said Friday Alsaedy was scheduled to plead guilty to a life sentence next week.
Alsaedy had been apprehended by police on February 27, 2015, two days after Bracken's death. That night, police had said he attacked a woman outside of a Walmart with a knife pointed into her back, demanding her purse and keys before shoving her into her car, police said at the time. He was charged with aggravated robbery--but it was in fact not until the next day that police discovered Bracken's body slumped in her car in the Peter Piper Pizza parking lot, just up the road from the Walmart.
Wood said this was the second suicide this year at the Harris County Jail.
The first was in February, when 32-year-old Vincent Dwayne Young hanged himself with a bedsheet. At that time, The Texas Commission on Jail Standards had determined the Harris County Jail was out of compliance with minimum state standards because jailers had failed to check on Young as frequently as the law requires. The jailer who failed to make the rounds in a timely manner was fired.
Young's suicide had also prompted various new security measures at the jail under Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, including requiring watch commanders to conduct weekly random audits comparing detention officers' written logs on inmate observation rounds with video.
Accused murderer commits suicide in Harris County jail
