A 37-year-old woman in jail on a child neglect charge and a 63-year-old man who police said took a swing at an officer after making threats at the bus station died Tuesday in unrelated incidents at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office's pre-trial detention center.
Patricia Affrunti was found unconscious about 1 p.m. during a routine wellness check, said JSO Chief Chris Butler. She was taken to UF Health Jacksonville, where she died.
Affrunti was arrested Monday afternoon on a child neglect charge and was in an isolation cell because she indicated during her intake interview that she might harm herself.
Butler said that routine wellness checks in the isolation area are performed every 15 minutes, and those were conducted on the woman, who was about to be released into the general population at the facility.
"There was nobody to see what happened (in the isolation cell)," Butler said.
A few hours later, Melvin Brown, who was in a mental health area on the sixth floor of the facility banged his head violently on a glass wall inside his cell until he passed out, Butler said.
Corrections officers who had been alerted to the area because the man was yelling and banging on a glass wall with his fists called in the medical emergency, and staff performed life-saving efforts until he was taken to UF Health Jacksonville, where he died at 4:39 p.m., police said.
Brown was arrested Nov. 7 on charges trespassing, resisting an officer with violence of and had been in the mental health lockdown area since then.
Butler said that neither Brown nor Affrunti were involved in any altercations with inmates , nor any incidents in which force was used on them by corrections officers inside the facility.
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