3 people have now died in Harris County Jail in January alone

“On January 4, 2023, the decedent was transported to Memorial Hermann Hospital for Altered Mental Status,” officials continue in the report. Doctors intubated Bains five days after his arrival at the hospital for reasons not listed in the report.

“On January 11, 2023, a neurological test was performed on the decedent, and it was determined he had no brain activity. At 3:18 p.m., a medical doctor pronounced death,” officials wrote.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to Chron’s questions about the specific so-called natural causes or illnesses that killed Sanjeep, nor about the “Altered Mental Status” that prompted authorities to take him to the hospital from the jail.

Bains is the third Harris County Jail detainee to die in the first month of 2023 alone. He was also the second man to die in a two-day window of what the Harris County Sheriff’s Office claimed were natural causes.

On Jan. 10, Gary Wayne Smith, 59, also died in the jail of “illness/natural cause” according to the Attorney General’s Office’s report on his death. During Smith’s booking on Dec. 6 for an alleged parole violation, jailers also noted that he had “numerous medical conditions.”

Bains and Smith’s deaths follow news that the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Harris Health have submitted a plan to revise their medical care procedures for detainees . The changes were prompted largely by the March 2022 death of Matthew Shelton, a 28-year-old who died of diabetic ketoacidosis when he failed to receive crucial medication despite orders for jailers to provide it.

“We must not forget that custodial deaths are occurring under the direct supervision and care of the HCSO staff. They cannot dismiss them as “natural” and shirk their responsibility with excuses like ‘people who’re coming into the jail are very sick,'” Said Krishnaveni Gundu, co-founder and CEO of Texas Jail Project.

“Detention officers are the gatekeepers of medical care inside the jail. We know from the hundreds of complaints we receive that people are routinely denied timely medical care and accused of ‘faking it.’ If we had been robustly funding our public health, housing and crisis respite services instead of wasting resources on punitive solutions, we would have had a truly safe community,” Gundu continued.

Bains’ death puts Harris County Jail on pace to surpass its 2022’s death count of 28 in-custody deaths by the end of this year. The 28 deaths registered by the jail in 2022 were the highest of any year in the past decade .