RIP Bella Rae

Bella Rae had her problems but she was one of the sweetest people I met in the hobby. There was many times we would grab a meal and BS after our appt. we had an opportunity to get to know each other on a personal level and she was working on herself. She will be missed as a friend. shit like this can't be tolerated in the United States. We need to be a better nation than this...

This guy sounds like a fucking asshole - Judge Cashman said of Ms. Xxx death. He then said, “If she decided that she’s going to do this, so be it.

April 19, 2017 6:40 PM
By Jonathan D. Silver / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The uncle of xxx, the woman who hanged herself in the Allegheny County Jail this week, acknowledged Wednesday that his niece was troubled but said she should not have ended up dead behind bars.

“She has struggled with her demons for many years,” Xxx of Huntington, W.Va., wrote in an email to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “But I must say no matter what this young woman did as a crime you don't go to jail and end up dead. Not at the young age of 33. Xxx was a human being. A person. A mother. A daughter. A niece. Her life had value. She was not just a 'number' to be processed at the jail and punished.”

Ms. Xxx was discovered Tuesday hanging in her cell in the jail’s medical housing unit at 2:12 a.m. and pronounced dead 15 minutes later. The county medical examiner’s office Wednesday ruled her death a suicide.


In light of that ruling and an investigation that uncovered no criminality in Ms. Xxx death, Allegheny County Police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said Wednesday that his agency’s involvement was over.


xxx
“The role of the Allegheny County Police in incidents of this nature is to conduct a death investigation to determine if there are any indications of criminality associated with the death,” Superintendent McDonough said.

“In this case, our investigation coincides with the ruling of the Medical Examiner that Ms. Xxx death was a suicide by hanging. Ms. Xxx cell, located within the Medical Housing Unit, had been checked periodically per jail protocols.”

Superintendent McDonough deferred to Warden Orlando Harper on questions concerning the facility and its protocols.

Ms. Xxx was in jail after being charged with escape for walking away from a residential facility in February where she had been living after being accused of violating her probation in a 2013 criminal case. The violation stemmed from an arrest in January, when Mount Oliver police charged her with resisting arrest and having a crack pipe and empty stamp bags.

In the past few years, Ms. Xxx had pleaded guilty to retail theft, endangering the welfare of children and a drug offense.

“Xxx was indeed a troubled soul,” Mr. Xxx wrote. “I am just curious as to what actually happened.”

Mr. Xxx said he wants to know whether “any lack of care was the issue because perhaps some at the jail felt her life was valued less than you[rs] or mine.”

In an interview Tuesday, Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge David R. Cashman, the head of the Jail Oversight Board, said he was told by the warden that there were no red flags about Ms. Xxx having suicidal tendencies. He said she was by herself in a cell on the medical unit recovering from a recent hospitalization for a knee abscess.

“This is not acceptable. That shouldn’t happen,” Judge Cashman said of Ms. Xxx death. He then said, “If she decided that she’s going to do this, so be it. The people went and did their rounds, they checked on the inmates that were in there, and that’s when they found her. It’s not that they were checking to make sure somebody wasn’t going to hang themselves...When you consider that you’ve got 2,200 people in that jail, that’s a lot of people to go look at at any given point in time.”

Mr. Xxx called the judge’s remarks “cavalier” and “callous.”

“In my opinion, if a young lady that has been in and out of jail since January and was isolated in a solitary cell, I would think the powers to be had enough insight and common sense to realize that she just might try to harm herself,” Mr. xxx wrote. “How pathetic.”

Awful. that Judge needs to be removed

Sorry to hear of her decision to take her life. Those types of people will likely find opportunity regardless of protections put in place. Sounds like a social worker made a big miss here. Never know until you walk in that person's shoes what they've been through. But addiction is a horrible thing

My deepest condolences to her family and friends.

Well I think I saw a piece in the paper that the ACJ has one of the highest suicide rates in the country when it comes to lockups. I think its a shame she got jail time for BS and ends up dead.