Tarrant County Jail inmate who died at hospital experienced ‘medical emergency’: officials
The Tarrant County Jail inmate who died after being taken to a hospital early Wednesday experienced a “medical emergency” in his cell, according to the sheriff’s office.
The cause of Harold Kent Roberts’ death is still pending on the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office website. The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Friday that Roberts experienced a medical emergency around midnight and collapsed in an elevator while on his way to the jail’s medical area for observation.
Roberts, 63, was pronounced dead at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth shortly before 1 a.m., according to the medical examiner.
According to court records, Roberts was arrested in September 2020 on a charge of injury to an elderly person. He was accused of grabbing and choking a woman in a domestic violence case in Fort Worth.
He was found incompetent to stand trial in the domestic violence case in November 2020. Roberts was ordered to receive mental health treatment as part of a competency restoration program he was required to participate in, according to court records. He was found competent to stand trial on Jan. 31 of this year, and was transferred from a state hospital back to the jail on Feb. 7.
At least seven agencies review and investigate all in-custody deaths, according to the sheriff’s office. These include Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office jail staff, the TCSO Criminal Investigations Division, The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, an outside law enforcement agency, JPS medical staff, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
This is the second death this year of someone incarcerated at the jail. Russell Qualls, 44, died on Jan. 9. His death was ruled an accident caused by fentanyl and trazodone toxicity, according to the medical examiner.
There have been over 60 deaths of people in custody of the jail since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017. There were 10 in 2023.
At a public forum in Arlington in January, Waybourn defended the conditions at the county jail and fielded questions and criticism about inmate deaths and other concerns.
“They’re having heart attacks because they use drugs, they use opioids that cause cardiac arrest. We brought people into the jail, and this happens all the time,” Waybourn said. “Those things happen all the time in our jail. A lot of times these people come in fighting us and we have what we call excited delirium, whether they’re hyped up on cocaine or they’re hyped up on methamphetamines and those things.”
This story includes information from the Star-Telegram’s archives.
This story was originally published February 16, 2024 at 11:42 AM.
