County Jail Records Second In-Custody Death of 2023

Milwaukee County Jail and Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

On Thursday, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) reported another death in the Milwaukee County Jail.

The MCSO released a statement saying a 37-year-old man, who the office is not identifying, was found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell during a “scheduled medication pass” at 9:12 a.m. “Life-saving measures were immediately started by MCJ staff and continued by first responders from the Milwaukee Fire Department, but the man was declared deceased at 9:49 a.m.,” the sheriff’s office stated.

This man is the second person to die in the Milwaukee County Jail in 2023 and the fourth person in less than 12 months. Since June 2022, there have been two alleged suicides, and now two deaths for unidentified reasons.

In January, a 49-year-old man later identified as Octaviano Juarez-Corro was reported dead. A month prior, in December 2022, a 20-year-old woman, later identified as Cilivea Sunray Thyrion, was reported to have allegedly committed suicide. And in June 2022, 21-year-old Brieon Green committed suicide in the jail.

In January this year, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm‘s office found no jail criminally liable for the death of Green. Green’s family publicly stated that a video of his death showed he committed suicide using a telephone cord and that a sheriff’s deputy walked past his cell as it happened.

Community activists and the families of both Green and Thyrion, both represented by Attorney B’Ivory LaMarr, have been calling for greater transparency from the sheriff’s office in the immediate aftermath of deaths in the facility. Specifically, they have consistently called for video of the incident to be shared with families shortly after their loved one is reported dead. In the case of Green, the family was not allowed the view the video for more than five months after his death.

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office will investigate this latest death, as it has the others.