A Harris County inmate locked up on a pair of misdemeanor charges died Wednesday after hanging herself inside a jail cell, marking the local lock-up's fifth apparent suicide in less than two years.

Tracy Whited was booked into the 1200 Baker Street jail on Saturday for criminal mischief and a misdemeanor escape charge. She was found hanging by a sheet in her cell on Monday, and died in the hospital two days later, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

"We were doing better with jail suicides, but it appears as if we have more work to do," said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, who tackled in-custody suicides with a sweeping bill last legislative session. "One person is too many committing suicide in any of the county jails in Texas."

When she first came into the jail, Whited denied having thoughts of self-harm, authorities said. She went through the usual intake process, and was seen by medical staff. Afterward, she was assigned to a general population cell with close to 50 other inmates.

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On Monday around 7:20 a.m., one of those other inmates flagged down a detention officer after spotting Whited unconscious and hanging from a bed sheet tied to her bunk.

Jail guards cut her down and started CPR, and paramedics rushed her to Ben Taub Hospital. She died on Wednesday morning after she was taken off life support, her family confirmed.

The 42-year-old's arrest stemmed from a dispute with her boyfriend, authorities said. She'd previously been told to stay away and issued a criminal trespass warning. But on Saturday, she went to see him and ended up allegedly knifing his SUV, officials said.

She was arrested by sheriff's deputies and charged with criminal mischief, according to court records. Then, she racked up a misdemeanor escape charge when she allegedly tried to leave the jail's booking facility later that day.

A hearing officer denied her a no-cash personal bond and instead set bail at $3,000. Court papers noted that she had three pending cases out of county, though she'd never been locked up in the local jail before, and doesn't appear to have a criminal record in Harris County.

After she hanged herself Monday morning, Judge David Fleischer granted her a personal bond.

Her death is being investigated by the Texas Rangers.

Born and raised in North Carolina, Whited moved to Texas with her boyfriend roughly a decade ago. She didn't stay in close contact with her family, and had struggled with drug use and legal problems elsewhere, according to her mother Peggy Lutz.

"I'm just having a hard time dealing with being so far away, trying to get her back," Lutz said late Wednesday.

To some, her death highlighted the need for bail reform.



"This loss breaks my heart," said Judge Franklin Bynum, a newly elected jurist who decided to run for office because of the county's misdemeanor bail practices. "We judges are working as fast as possible to reform this ancient punishment bureaucracy to make sure that no one who needs help will get a cage instead."



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The newly elected misdemeanor judges recently ended their appeal in a landmark lawsuit over the use of cash bail in low-level cases, which a federal judge found unconstitutional. The county and the former misdemeanor judges - those swept out of office in November - fought the against the lawsuit, but the freshly elected officials are now working on a settlement.



"By settling the bail lawsuit and recognizing the constitutional right to pre-trial release, we will prevent tragedies like this," Bynum said. "We are working every day to stop the senseless violence in this broken system."

Jail officials stressed that the county lock-up here see suicides at a rate below the national average but, still, Whited's death comes on the heels of a handful of others in recent months.



Back in early 2017, 32-year-old Vincent Young was found dead in an infirmary cell after guards making their rounds spotted his body hanging by a bed sheet, the sheriff's office said at the time.

Afterward, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards hit the lock-up with a non-compliance finding, as Young hadn't been checked on for more than an hour by the time officers found him.

There's no indication of any skipped checks leading up to Whited's death, according to jail spokesman Jason Spencer.

At the time, Young's death sparked protests as some questioned whether it was truly a suicide, and the jail afterward announced a number of changes to boost suicide prevention.

Then in late 2017, accused murderer Maytham Alsaedy hanged himself with a bedsheet. He'd been housed in the mental health ward and was classified as having "serious and persistent mental illness."



The state again found the facility out of compliance because a jailer doing rounds didn't bother to make the 26-year-old remove newspaper covering a cell window - so staff didn't actually lay eyes on the man or see what he was doing.



In July 2018, Navy veteran Eldon Lee Jackson killed himself in solitary confinement, months after he'd been arrested for arson when he tried lighting the house on fire as he slashed his own throat.

He'd been placed in isolation when he wouldn't stop calling his wife and harassing her. The next day, he killed himself with a noose fashioned from the gauze used to treat his burns.

Less than a month later, Debora Ann Lyons - who was being held on $1,500 bail - was found hanging from a bedsheet attached to a door in the same 1200 Baker building where Whited died this week. According to a source familiar with the case, she had threatened suicide at least once in the days before her death.

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Like Alsaedy's death, Lyons' suicide sparked a closer look from the state, and another out-of-compliance finding.

On hearing news of another inmate death, Coleman promised more legislation to address potential gaps in jail mental health care and screening.

"We will file something that creates new protocols - screening protocols - and strengthens the ones we've already put in place," he said. "We're going to look at this suicide, that occurred on a misdemeanor offense - and I think that we have more work to do."