Three Charged in Jailhouse Death of Mentally Ill College Student
Three people were indicted Wednesday on involuntary manslaughter charges after a mentally ill college student was found dead inside a Georgia jail cell.
Mathew Ajibade, a 22-year-old college student, was arrested on New Years Day after allegedly attacking his girlfriend and breaking a Sheriff’s deputy’s nose during a bipolar episode. He was transported to the Chatham County Detention Center, where he was strapped to a restraining chair inside an isolation cell, tasered, and apparently left to die.
Earlier this month, Chatham County coroner William Wessinger ruled Ajibade’s death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma, citing “abrasions, scrapes and bumps on [Ajibade’s] upper body and head.” Via NBC:
“[Homicide is] sort of an incendiary term. The average layperson thinks that means murder. It does not. It’s death at the hands of somebody else, that somebody else did something that caused the death,” Wessinger said.
While Ajibade had various injuries on his skin, it wasn’t clear where he got them from, he said.
“Were they incurred at the jail when he was booked? Were they incurred when he was being arrested? Were they incurred when he was in a scuffle with his girlfriend?” he said. “That’s for somebody else to determine — maybe a court.”
Now a court will, in fact, determine what happened: two former jailhouse employees and one contract health worker have been charged with involntary manslaughter, the AP reports—carrying a potential sentence of up to ten years.
Nine cops were also reportedly fired after Ajibade’s body was discovered, but none have been indicted.
