Inmate suicides are in the spotlight in our region.<\/p>\n
Three are under investigation in Lehigh and Northampton Counties. All three cases are separate and unrelated, according to officials.<\/p>\n
The Lehigh County man who was convicted of sexually abusing an underage girl for years before taking her to Mexico committed suicide in the Lehigh County Jail earlier this week.<\/p>\n
Kevin Esterly was scheduled to be sentenced June 30. He had faced up to 87 years in prison.<\/p>\n
“This individual in question, you know, did not exhibit any symptoms of mental health or distress, so we can’t prevent something we can’t detect,” said Lehigh County Executive Josh Siegel.<\/p>\n
An autopsy found that Esterly died from hanging and his death was ruled a suicide.<\/p>\n
“This was not an individual who was in danger of self-harm, had not exhibited any mental illness or mental distress, had not said or done anything physically that would give us any indication that this was going to happen.”<\/p>\n
Siegel says he has confidence in the Lehigh County Jail and its leadership. He says in additional to mental health screenings, the jail also completes interval checks.<\/p>\n
“I think that this individual in question is somewhat of an outlier in part because not only were they not showing any signs of mental distress, but I think given the circumstances of their conviction and the severity of their offenses, this was someone who was confronting, you know, a life behind bars or a very different life,” said Siegel.<\/p>\n
The death in Lehigh County comes on the heels of two inmate suicides at Northampton County Prison.<\/p>\n
A 34-year-old woman on June 14th and a 35-year-old man on June 19th. In both of those cases, the cause of death was asphyxiation.<\/p>\n
We reached out to the Communications Manager for Northampton County who provided this statement:<\/p>\n
“In each of these separate and unrelated incidents, all life-saving measures were taken before the individuals were transported to the hospital via EMS. These matters are under investigation; we are unable to provide further comment at this time. We extend our deepest condolences to these individuals’ families and loved ones.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inmate suicides are in the spotlight in our region. Three are under investigation in Lehigh and Northampton Counties.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,433,434],"class_list":["post-227376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-lehigh-county","tag-northampton-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}