Death investigation launched after man dies in Clay County jail custody
A man being held in the Clay County Detention Center died almost a week after an apparent suicide attempt, according to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.
Christopher Ballowe, 48, was found by his cellmate during an alleged suicide attempt at 1:52 p.m. on Friday, Oct 10, according to sheriff’s office spokesperson Sarah Boyd.
Inmates and detention staff stepped in, with staff performing life-saving measures until an ambulance arrived. Ballowe died at a hospital on Thursday, Boyd said.
Ballowe had recently returned from a court hearing at the time of the incident and didn’t show previous signs that he was at risk for self-harm, Boyd said.
Ballowe was booked into the Clay County Detention Center on Oct. 2 for a felony domestic assault charge for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, according to court records. He was also being held for violating his probation on another domestic assault charge, Boyd said.
Ballowe’s death is the fourth death at the jail this year.
Daniel Borkowski, 39, died on April 3 after only being in the jail for three days on medical observation for health issues before being transported to the hospital. His cause of death was deemed natural causes.
Kenneth Scott, 63, was in jail for nearly three months before he was found unresponsive during cell checks on Feb. 6. Two weeks later, his autopsy revealed he had undiagnosed metastatic cancer.
Wende Routh, 55, was declared dead in her cell on Feb. 20 one day after she was sentenced to 180 days. Her autopsy showed her cause of death was hypertensive cardiovascular disease with type 2 diabetes and chronic polysubstance use as contributing factors. Routh had been in the jail for under three weeks.
Previous reporting by The Star, which examined a span from May 2021 to January 2023 during which the jail had three inmate deaths, showed the prisoner death rate at the jail was more than twice the national jail death rate, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.
But Boyd, the sheriff’s office spokesperson, contended at the time that when calculated by the total number of people booked in annually, the county’s number is lower than the national rate.
Previous reporting from Katie Moore and Bill Lukitsch contributed.
