Wakiesha Wilson
Thirty-six-year-old Wakiesha Wilson was found dead in a Los Angeles Police Department’s Metropolitan Detention Center jail cell over the Easter holiday weekend, according to news reports.
Wilson’s mother, Lisa Hines, called the county coroner’s office, who said her child had died from hanging and that the incident was ruled a suicide.
According to reports by the local L.A. news outlet ABC 7, Wilson was engaged in a disagreement with officers before she was found unresponsive.
Hines began investigating her daughter’s whereabouts after Wilson failed to appear at a court hearing last Tuesday.
Lasist reports that Wilson was scheduled to call home from the detention center that Sunday at the tail end of the Easter holiday weekend, but the woman never called her mother. Authorities said Wilson was found dead that Sunday.
“I don’t believe that. My daughter would not kill herself. It’s not like this is the first time she’s been incarcerated. No, she had too much to live for,” said Hines to ABC 7.
Hines and other family members do not believe Wilson would commit suicide. According to the family’s attorney, Jaaye Person-Lynn, they knew about the disagreement prior to her death:
“We know there was some kind of disagreement with a detention officer or an LAPD officer. We know that after that disagreement she passed away.”
Person-Lynn also stated that Wilson was bipolar. She joins other women — like UK woman Sarah Reed and Sandra Bland in Texas — who have died in police custody under strange circumstances.
Reed was incarcerated in 2012 for allegedly shoplifting in London’s Regent Street. However, in jail she was succumb to police brutality that was caught on tape. After the tape surfaced, the British woman was found dead in her cell January.
Bland was in Texas for a job interview when she was stopped for a traffic violation by former Texas trooper Brian Encinia. After a verbal altercation with Encinia, the 28-year-old woman was arrested and later found hanging her jail cell.
All three women’s deaths were ruled a suicide.
