A man being held at the county jail in Murrieta died Saturday afternoon, with the cause still under investigation but no signs of foul play, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said.
Deputies were called to the cell of an unresponsive person at 4:15 p.m. Saturday at the Cois Byrd Detention Center, according to the sheriff’s department. Jail medical staff immediately tried life-saving measures, but American Medical Response officials pronounced him dead at 4:48 p.m.
The 31-year-old man’s identity has not been released, and the coroner’s bureau will determine the cause of death.
Oversight of Riverside County’s jails has drawn scrutiny after a record-breaking year in 2022, when 18 inmates died, the most of any year according to public data going back more than a decade. From 2005 to 2021, the county averaged roughly seven inmate deaths a year.
Last month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced an investigation of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, citing a “disturbing” rise in deaths in the county’s jails, as well as allegations of excessive force and other misconduct.
The incident Saturday was the third in-custody death reported by the sheriff’s department so far this year.