The entrance to Riverside Regional Jail, a Prince George County facility that serves seven localities.
A Riverside Regional Jail inmate was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide, the third inmate to die at the facility in less than 14 months.
Jail staff found Alex Tripp, 32, unresponsive in his cell at 5:14 p.m. and initiated a medical emergency response that included CPR, the jail said in a release.
Prince George County paramedics responded and continued to perform CPR, but Tripp could not be revived.
Tripp’s cause of death is still pending, but jail officials said it appears he committed suicide.
Prince George police are investigating the death, and Riverside has initiated an internal investigation.
Tripp was booked into the facility less than a day earlier — at 2:21 p.m. Oct. 30 — on charges of petit larceny, obtaining money under false pretenses and two narcotics offenses. He was being held for Chesterfield County without bond.
Tripp is at least the third person to die at Riverside since September 2016 and the 11th since June 2013.
On Sept. 14, 2016, Raven Marie Darr-Morse, 47, of Chester, was found dead in her cell in the jail’s medical housing unit. At the time, officials said it appeared Darr-Morse died of natural causes and an investigation was commenced.
She was found dead after being in custody for 24 hours on charges of violating the condition of her probation.
About two months later, Artur Kharendzyuk, 26, was found dead in his cell on Nov. 26, 2016. The medical examiner’s office ruled Kharendzyuk’s death a suicide by hanging.
Kharendzyuk, dubbed the “Soul Patch Bandit,” had been arrested four days earlier and was a suspect in a series of bank robberies in the Richmond area. He also was accused of killing his 1-year-old son in Newport News.
From June 1, 2013, to Aug. 31, 2016, a total of 129 inmates had died in Virginia jails, according to a 2016 Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis of state figures. Of those deaths, eight were Riverside inmates.
Tripp
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