<\/p>\n
Gemma Swingle, 36, was found unresponsive and died at the Tarrant County jail on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Trevor Swingle <\/p>\n
A recently pregnant woman died at the Tarrant County<\/a> jail Saturday, the fifth in-custody death at the jail this year, officials said.<\/p>\n Gemma Swingle, 36, had been booked into the jail on Aug. 25, but about four days later was found unresponsive in her cell, according to the Tarrant County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n At 1:04 a.m. Saturday, a detention officer performed routine checks of the inmate housing area and noted Swingle “was ok,” according to the sheriff’s office news release. The officer returned 35 minutes later and found her non-responsive, the release said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The officer performed life-saving measures on\u00a0Swingle until medical staff from John Peter Smith Hospital arrived, the sheriff’s office said. Swingle died at 2:20 a.m. at the jail.<\/p>\n More than three weeks before her death, on\u00a0Aug. 5, Swingle had been arrested on a prostitution charge by Fort Worth police and was in custody while being treated at John Peter Smith Hospital for unspecified medical reasons.<\/p>\n North Richland Hills police, who were separately investigating Swingle over an alleged fraudulent check,\u00a0were contacted by Fort Worth police on Aug. 12 and told that \u201cSwingle was pregnant and her water broke,\u201d according to an affidavit from a North Richland Hills detective.<\/p>\n The affidavit said the North Richland Hills department was told that prior to her water breaking, Swingle had escaped custody while at the hospital, but was recaptured and returned to the hospital.<\/p>\n Fort Worth police\u00a0said in the report that\u00a0after Swingle was recaptured, she was returned to the hospital uninjured and cleared by EMS. She was transported to jail but was later returned for medical reasons, police wrote in the report. Her pregnancy was not mentioned in the Fort Worth police report. \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u2018We are very concerned\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n Swingle had a baby girl, her younger brother Trevor Swingle told The News. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has custody of the baby, the agency confirmed.<\/p>\n The family is waiting on an autopsy to confirm\u00a0Swingle\u2019s cause of death.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a possibility\u00a0Swingle was left in her cell when she could\u2019ve been medically treated, the family wants to know, Trevor Swingle said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very concerned that she was either not checked up on at all or ignored,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Gemma Swingle lived a hard life and never stayed in one place too long, her brother said. Her criminal history includes a long list of cases in the Tarrant County criminal clerk\u2019s office.<\/p>\n Her brother recognizes the mistakes\u00a0Swingle made while still seeing her as the adventurous and fun sister he lost.<\/p>\n \u201cI was saddened,\u201d he said. \u201cMy sister kind of chose a poor life, but I didn’t expect her to die in the care of the hands of the state. I think that’s pretty egregious.\u201d<\/p>\n Previous deaths in Tarrant County jail<\/p>\n This is the fifth in-custody death at the Tarrant County jail this year, according to Robbie Hoy, a spokesman with the sheriff’s office.\u00a0 Her death is being investigated by Haltom City Police.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n John\u00a0Barr, 36, was the first death reported<\/a> at the jail this year. He was found unresponsive in his cell on April 19, three days after he was booked into the jail.<\/p>\n Three men died at the jail in June, all within the same week. James Johnson, 40, died on June 16<\/a>, while Carl\u00a0McCray<\/a>, 40, died the next day.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mack Greer died on June 18. He had a lengthy medical history that predated his time at the Tarrant County Jail, including a lifelong genetic disorder, Hoy said. Greer was granted a compassionate release from jail but is still considered an in-custody death, according to Hoy.<\/p>\n The sheriff\u2019s office said all in-custody deaths are investigated and reviewed by jail staff, the agency\u2019s criminal investigations division, the medical examiner\u2019s office, an outside law enforcement agency,\u00a0JPS medical staff, the Texas Attorney General\u2019s Office and the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gemma Swingle, 36, was found unresponsive and died at the Tarrant County jail on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1638,116,118,117,88643,89217],"class_list":["post-424329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-brief","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-tp-fort-worth","tag-tp-tarrant-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n