On Tuesday at 10:39 a.m., inmates at the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections told corrections officers there was an emergency in one of the housing units, jail officials said in a press release. When correction officers arrived, they found a 43-year-old white man unresponsive.
Officials said corrections officers and Louisville Fire and EMS tried to revive the man, but he was pronounced dead by 11:11 a.m.
Jail officials said the man was in custody since March.
The Jefferson County Coroner's Office said Wednesday the man was Brandon T. McQuillen, a white male, and that he died by suicide.
LMDC’s Professional Standards Unit and Louisville Metro Police’s Public Integrity Unit will investigate the death, in keeping with standard protocol.
This was the third in-custody death this year. In February, 60-year-old Rodney Robinson died after being in custody for 24 hours. In March, another man – named Samuel Bradford – died at the downtown jail.
A scathing 2023 audit revealed several issues at the downtown jail facility. It highlighted poor communication between corrections officers and medical staff, inadequate documentation of inmates’ medical conditions and staffing shortages.
There have been 21 in-custody deaths since 2021. Twelve of those occurred between November 2021 and October 2022. A new director, Jerry Collins, took over the department during that period and introduced some changes to protocols and technology at the jail.
While the annual rate of in-custody deaths has decreased since then, social justice advocates continue to push for improvements. They have called for LMDC to improve its treatment of those in-custody and reevaluate its health care contract following two jail deaths last year.
LMDC works with YesCare, a leading provider of health care services for correctional facilities. The provider — which works with nearly 500 other correctional facilities in the U.S. — filed for bankruptcy last year.
This story was updated with details about the man who died.
