Jarrod Gross, 25, of Herculaneum died Tuesday afternoon (March 17) from an apparent suicide in the Jefferson County Jail in Hillsboro, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office reported.
Inmates found Gross hanging in a shower and attempted CPR on him and alerted corrections officers. The officers found Gross unresponsive and called in medical staff and emergency medical services personnel, but he died, the Sheriff’s Office said in a press release.
“It is a horrible incident,” Sheriff Dave Marshak said.
Gross had been in the Jail, 510 First St., since Feb. 21, the Sheriff’s Office reported.
He had been charged with fourth-degree assault, a class A misdemeanor, related to a May 2019 incident in Herculaneum. He also had pleaded guilty to a class A misdemeanor stealing charge in April 2017 and had been sentenced to one-year in jail. However, that sentence was suspended and he was placed on two years’ probation, which had been suspended, according to court records.
Gross was not on suicide watch, the Sheriff's Office reported.
“The jail is already a high-risk environment for many reasons, but particularly for people incarcerated awaiting charge disposition, which is why we have a full-time mental health professional on our staff,” Marshak said. “However, there were no pre-indicators that he should be treated differently than other inmates.”
After his death, investigators said they learned from the man’s family he had previously made suicidal statements, Marshak said.
“In all jail death incidents, a thorough internal review is conducted to ensure we followed our policies and procedures,” Marshak said. “In this situation, an inmate was in the shower alone behind a shower curtain. Even his cellmates he had spent the last month with didn’t observe any pre-indicators. If hypothetically we had a one-to-one ratio of corrections officers to inmates, we would have still struggled to prevent this.”
As of today, the Jail had 198 inmates, Marshak said.
“We do our absolute best to keep everybody safe,” he said. “This year is the first year we have a mental health professional assigned to the Jail. When there are pre-indicators of suicidal thoughts or communications, our mental health professional can often times intervene and provide support.”
Marshak said this was the first death in the Jail this year, and as far as he could remember, was the third death in the last four years at the Jail.
He also said there was a death outside the Jail on May 21, 2019, when Gary Finklang, 54, of St. Louis was found dead there. He had been arrested two days earlier for suspicion of driving while intoxicated and driving with a revoked license and was held for 12 hours and released May 20, the Sheriff’s Office reported.
After that Finklang was seen throughout Hillsboro after his release, and it was unclear why he remained in the area after being released from the Jail, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Grant Bissell said at the time.