Bayonne man awaiting sentencing dies at Hudson County jail

A 41-year old man awaiting sentencing on a theft charge died at the Hudson County jail on Sunday, hours after a female inmate attempted suicide by hanging, a county official said Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, the state released the autopsy report for a 47-year-old woman who died July 14 with just two days remaining in a 180-day sentence. The report said the woman, Jenifer Towle, had several foreign items in her stomach, including plastic, food wrappers and a nail clipper.

The man who died Sunday was identified as Dominick J. Ramunni, 41, of Bayonne. He collapsed in a housing unit at the Hudson County Corrections and Rehabilitation Center in Kearny and was pronounced dead after medical staff members performed CPR, said James Kennelly, the Hudson County spokesman. Kennelly said no other information was available, and he could not say whether the man had any medical conditions.

“I don’t have any other information at this time related to the individual’s passing,’’ he said.

Earlier on Sunday, around 3:30 a.m., a woman was found hanging inside the jail and was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, Kennelly said. She remained at the hospital on Tuesday, he said.

Kennelly did not release the woman's name, saying it was not known if her family had been notified. The woman had been held at the jail since Thursday on failure to appear on a warrant. She had “long-standing” traffic violations, including driving with a suspended license, Kennelly said.

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Ramunni was the third Hudson County jail inmate to die in custody since June.

Reports from the Medical Examiner's Office for Towle, of Union City, revealed that she had been on suicide watch since she entered the jail, where she was held in a medical ward, but refused to leave her cell most of the time.

The manner of death was noted as suicide. The cause of death included a list of medical terms for bacteria and sepsis, brought on by perforated gastric ulcer and ingestion of non-food items.

Examiners found non-food items in her stomach, including Styrofoam, condiment packets, milk cartons, drink cartons, paper, a Band-Aid, a plastic bag, a cookie wrapper, an exam glove and a nail clipper, according to the report.

Her stomach, examiners noted, was "markedly distended." Stomachs normally hold around 1 to 1.5 liters of food and drink, but Towle had more than 3 liters of non-food items in her stomach.

Examiners also found an unidentified foreign object measuring 6.5-by-3.5-by-1.5 centimeters in her esophagus. The autopsy also noted that Towle had a head laceration, but the cause was not clear.

Towle had a history of high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, depression, mental illness and alcohol abuse, according to the autopsy and investigative data sheet, which were released in response to a public records request from The Record. She had been serving 180 days in jail for driving while intoxicated, a mandatory sentence because it was her third DWI offense. ​​

“They are all very tragic, and it’s a little disconcerting,'' said Hudson County Freeholder William O’Dea. "There could be perfectly legitimate explanations for it, but when you have as many of these incidents as we have had, it just makes you pause and makes you want to look at things more closely and make sure that there is not something that we are missing, that we need to address.’’

O’Dea said the Freeholder Board's regular public safety meeting with corrections staff and the sheriff is scheduled for Jan. 23, and he said officials will discuss the death and the attempted suicide. He said they will likely invite a representative from CFG Health Systems, the private company that provides health services at the jail, to attend the meeting.

“We’ll get a briefing on what occurred, what reports they have, and what was the response of the medical unit,’’ he said.

The Freeholder Board last year also hired the National Commission of Correctional Health Care to perform an assessment of the jail's health services.

“We will have them do an overview,’’ he said. “They’ll look at what happened, what was the response from the medical perspective of who was there at the time, and determine whether or not they feel that there was anything that could have been done that weren’t done, or if things were done in a timely manner.”

“It’s good that we have them working for us, because we have a quick ability to get on top of it and ascertain that information,’’ he added.

On June 9, Carlos Mejia-Bonilla, a 44-year-old immigration detainee from El Salvador, was rushed from the jail to Jersey City Medical Center, where he died the next day. Federal authorities identified the cause of death as “internal bleeding and hemorrhagic shock,’’ meaning he had lost so much blood that his organs failed.

Mejia-Bonilla suffered from chronic diabetes, cirrhosis and anemia. In the weeks before his death, he told his family his health was deteriorating because he had not been receiving proper medication and treatment at the jail, where he had been detained for 10 weeks. His family has alleged that the jail was ignoring concerns about his health and that this contributed to or hastened his death.

The state medical examiner, after determining he died of natural causes, did not order an autopsy.

His death led to two county investigations and the dismissal of two medical employees.

His death, and Towle's death weeks later, led to a public outcry about poor medical care at the jail.

The corrections center has had a history of complaints and allegations of medical neglect in the jail’s division for people detained on immigration violations. A complaint filed with federal authorities in May 2016 noted that 121 detainees reported medical grievances at the jail between January 2014 and March 2016.

Last month, the Hudson County jail was among four immigration detention facilities that were found to have exposed detainees to inhumane treatment, denied them prompt medical care and served them food that had not been properly handled, according to an inspection report released last month.

The report, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, was based on interviews with detainees and staff members at five detention centers across the United States. A spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said the inspectors visited the Hudson County jail on Dec. 14 and 15, 2016, six months before Mejia-Bonilla's death.

Email: alvarado@northjersey.com