Another inmate at Atlanta's problematic Fulton County Jail is dead, marking the sixth inmate death in six weeks, and tenth this year at the facility where former President Donald Trump was booked and released last month.
Detention officers found the inmate, 24-year-old Shawndre Delmore, unresponsive during a routine check on Aug. 31. Despite lifesaving measures from jail and later hospital staff, he remained in an unresponsive state and died Sept. 3.
It's a similar story for most of the other six inmates who died in the jail's custody recently.
From July 31 to Aug. 26, four inmates were also found unresponsive in their cells and were later pronounced deceased. The fourth one, 34-year-old Samuel Lawrence, had recently filed a civil rights complaint against the jail alleging excessive force from deputies and other inmates at the jail that led to injuries.
The Atlanta Police Department has said it's investigating both Lawrence's and Delmore's deaths.
Delmore's family told 11Alive they don't understand how he could've walked into the jail in April a healthy young man then suddenly died unexpectedly months later.
"My son did not deserve to die like this. He had his whole life ahead of him. I wasn't expecting to see my son in the condition he was in," said his mother Natasha Holoman.
A fourth inmate has died in this problematic jail's custody this month
An inmate died over the weekend at Fulton County Jail, after having recently filed a complaint against deputies for use of excessive force.
On Aug. 31, an inmate dispute turned into a mass stabbing at the jail, resulting in one inmate's death and four others injured with stab wounds.
These six deaths, along with another four to happen there this year, have pushed the Fulton County jail system further into the eyeline of the Department of Justice, which launched a civil investigation into the facility's alleged unsanitary conditions and severe violence in July.
The investigation stemmed from 35-year-old inmate LaShawn Thompson's death in September 2022. His family claimed he had been eaten alive by bedbugs and insects while living in the jail, alongside a private autopsy revealing Thompson had died from "severe neglect."
A recent statement from Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said these violent and deadly incidents at the jail are "of grave concern but unfortunately [are] not surprising" due to the facility's dangerous overcrowding and its "crumbling walls."
And during a news conference Thursday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said the jail just can't handle all that it has on its plate.
"Atlanta and Fulton County has become too big. [The jail] was antiquated the day they built it," Willis said. "People deserve to be housed humanely, even when they've been accused of crimes. We need a bigger facility, and it needs to be a facility that treats people humanely."
And adding to this jail's plate of cases is the massive one involving former President Donald Trump and 18 other co-defendants. They were all booked at the jail last month, but only one was actually held and released days later.
