{"id":62731,"date":"2025-11-20T22:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/62731\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T22:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:29:08","slug":"medical-examiner-ids-jail-inmate-who-died-as-brandon-pleffner-44","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/62731\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical examiner ID’s jail inmate who died as Brandon Pleffner, 44"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Central<\/a>The central jail on Front Street in downtown San Diego. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Authorities on Thursday publicly identified an inmate who died last weekend at San Diego Central Jail.<\/p>\n

Deputies performing routine rounds found Brandon Pleffner, 44, unconscious and unresponsive in his cell at the Front Street detention center shortly after 7 a.m. Sunday, according to the San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jail staffers tried in vain to revive Pleffner prior to the arrival of paramedics, who took over the lifesaving attempts before pronouncing him dead at the scene.<\/p>\n

A ruling on the cause of Pleffner\u2019s death remains on hold pending completion of postmortem examinations.<\/p>\n

Pleffner had been in custody since Nov. 8, facing charges of shoplifting with prior convictions.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office, which runs the county jails, has long been under scrutiny due to an unusually high number of in-custody deaths. In 2022, the California State Auditor\u2019s Office found \u201cdeficiencies with how the (agency) provides care for and protects incarcerated individuals (that) likely contributed to in-custody deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

That audit<\/a> examined 185 deaths within the San Diego-area jail system from 2006 through 2020, a rate that exceeded all of California\u2019s other large counties during the same period; there were 19 in-custody deaths in 2022 alone, and another six in 2023.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office has committed to a $500 million effort to modernize and upgrade its jails, but critics have questioned whether those efforts have been sufficient.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The central jail on Front Street in downtown San Diego. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[37824,74,37825,18334,76,75,1699],"class_list":{"0":"post-62731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-jail-deaths","9":"tag-san-diego","10":"tag-san-diego-central-jail","11":"tag-san-diego-county-sheriffs-department","12":"tag-san-diego-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego-news","14":"tag-shoplifting"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}