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Inmate's death ruled suicide
Indiana man hung self with sweatshirt draw string
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An Indiana man’s death in the Long County Jail this past Friday has been ruled a suicide, according to Ludowici Police Department Chief Richard Robertson.
Robert Wayne Saylor, 41, apparently hung himself with a cord that he removed from a hooded sweatshirt he wore while being detained.
According to Robertson, Saylor was arrested in Ludowici for a warrant filed in Indiana of five counts of theft and one count of escaping from incarceration. The chief said that Saylor had signed a waiver for extradition on Dec. 18, and was waiting to be picked up and returned to Indiana to face the pending charges.
“After his death, I called in the (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) to help with the investigation, just so an outside agency got to look at the case,” Robertson said. “We talked to some of the other prisoners, and they said that he had been acting normal and nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.
“None of us had noticed him acting like anything was wrong, either.”
According to Robertson, another prisoner discovered Saylor hanging from a showerhead and informed the dispatcher on duty. The dispatcher and a police officer removed the cord from around Saylor’s neck and attempted to revive him but were unsuccessful.
Robertson said that an autopsy completed on Saylor this past Saturday said his death was caused by “asphyxiation.”  
Robertson said that the sweatshirt, which Saylor removed the cord from, was examined before Saylor was placed in a cell.
“It appears that the string had worked its way into the back of the hoody and couldn’t be detected when we looked at it,” said Robertson.
Robertson stated that when prisoners are detained, they and their clothes are searched to ensure that a string or anything else is not in the clothing. In this case, however, the string or cord could not be seen or felt.
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