Santa Barbara County Main Jail Inmate Dies in Apparent Suicide
Sheriff's Office Releases Additional Details on Man Found Dead in His Bunk Saturday Morning
[Update: Mon., Oct. 23, 3:25pm]
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office on Monday released additional details about the apparent suicide of an inmate at the Main Jail on Saturday.
In a statement released over the weekend, Sheriff’s spokesperson Raquel Zick said that custody staff conducting inmate checks found the male inmate unresponsive in the bunk of his single-occupancy cell on Saturday at around 6:20 a.m. with “a piece of linen fashioned as a ligature around” his neck. Lifesaving measures, including CPR and the administration of the overdose-reversing drug Narcan, were unsuccessful, and the man was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:30 a.m.
“Although this appears to be an apparent suicide, the Sheriff’s Office is conducting a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident,” explained Zick, who said investigators from Criminal Investigations, Coroner’s Bureau, and Administrative Investigations responded to conduct multiple investigations.
On Monday, Zick released additional information on the in-custody death, including the inmate’s identity and charges. The deceased inmate has been identified as 64-year-old Paul Howard Gillett of Santa Barbara. Gillett had been booked at the Main Jail by Santa Barbara Police Department officers on September 29 for felony assault with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor battery. He was also being held on a court remand for a violation of probation for driving under the influence. His bail had been set at $45,000.
The Coroner’s Bureau will be conducting a further investigation to determine the cause and manner of Gillett’s death.
Gillett’s death comes shortly after Sheriff Bill Brown, whose department oversees jail operations, wrote that he “wholly disagreed” with this summer’s Grand Jury report on last year’s in-custody death of Jonathan Paul Thomas, a morbidly obese inmate with serious mental-health and drug-abuse challenges who died of a heart attack 20 minutes after being booked in jail. The report offered a sweeping critique of the mental-health care currently available to inmates in the county jail along with several recommendations to improve said care. Brown stated that most of the Grand Jury’s recommendations “will not be implemented.”
