Two female inmates injured after drop from jail upper-floor railing

Two female inmates jumped over a railing in apparent suicide attempts on March 27, 2019, according to Montgomery County Jail records.

Two female inmates jumped over a railing in apparent suicide attempts on March 27, 2019, according to Montgomery County Jail records.

Two women incarcerated in the Montgomery County Jail on Wednesday said they had chest pains before hanging from an upper-floor railing and letting go in apparent suicide attempts.

The women, aged 24 and 26, were awake and breathing afterwards, but taken to an area hospital for evaluation, according to jail and sheriff’s office records.

A Montgomery County Jail incident report noted that when a corrections officer let one woman out of her cell to go to medical, she proceeded up a staircase.

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“I asked (one woman) where are you going? And she stated, ‘I am going to jump over the rail,’ ” the corrections officer wrote, adding that the other woman followed the first. “Both inmates looked at each other first before attempting to jump over the rail.”

The report said one woman straddled a rail, stood on the outer lip of the railing, grabbed a second rail and dropped down onto a sink before slipping onto the floor. The other woman mounted the rail, dropped down and hit her head on a pencil sharpener.

Another report said one surveillance video showed that one inmate hit the back of her head on a concrete block. Mental health professionals and medical units were dispatched from the Dayton Fire Department and one inmate was placed in a neck brace.

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The women were transported to Miami Valley in separate ambulances. One was still a patient Thursday, but no condition was available. The other was not listed as a patient, the hospital said.

Later, jail personnel found a letter that “had topics of drugs withdrawal and the inmate having a hard time in jail,” reports said.

One woman was in jail for possessing drug abuse instruments and obstructing official business. The other was booked in for resisting arrest, domestic violence and a warrant from another county.

Both had been in the jail for about a week before the incident and had been booked into Montgomery County Jail numerous times in the past six years, according to online records.

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A report said jail supervisors relocated inmates to make A-pod a male housing unit and the second floor female housing.

A sheriff’s office spokeswoman said command staff would have no comment on the incident.

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The recent report from the Justice Committee for the Montgomery County Jail noted there were four suicides between August 2017 and August 2018, per jail staff.

That report also said that between January and May 2018, there had been 150 suicide gestures, and the committee concluded “this is likely an under reporting of the suicide attempts in the facility.”

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