Maryland corrections authorities confirmed Sunday that a 34-year-old prisoner at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, segregated from the general population for “security reasons,” was found dead on Friday.
Mark Vernarelli, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correction Services, said the inmate’s death was being treated as a “homicide.” Prison authorities are withholding the man’s name until his family can be contacted.
Officials “believe that the death is suspicious,” Vernarelli said.
According to sources familiar with the investigation, the prisoner was discovered gagged, stabbed and robbed of drugs. Vernarelli would not confirm these details.
“I don’t know how he was killed or why,” he said.
Vernarelli said prisoners who are segregated from the general population are kept in “individual cells” and do not mix with other inmates. “He should have been in a single cell,” Vernarelli said.
But he added that inmates do have contact with other prisoners if they have jobs.
“A lot of the inmates work jobs within the prison,” he said.
The Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, known as “The Cut” by inmates, is a maximum-security prison that houses some of the state’s most violent criminals.
Vernarelli said the prison has been “relatively quiet this year.”
The department’s Internal Investigation Unit is looking into the death in conjunction with the Maryland State Police, he said.
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