Inmate Hanged In Cell Dead For 10 Hours While Guards Watched Netflix

Employees at the Missouri Department of Corrections were too busy surfing Facebook and watching Netflix to notice an inmate had hanged himself. David Garceau, 41, was dead for 10 hours before guards, having skipped obligatory security checks and monitoring, found his body.

Surveillance footage from the St. Louis Community Release Center, where Garceau was being housed in the Administrative Segregation Unit, proved that workers had not conducted the checks they claimed to have done in administrative logs, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday. The Post-Dispatch obtained a report from the department regarding the October incident.

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Surveillance video recorded in the hours before Garceau hanged himself showed him testing various ways to secure a bed sheet while a review of the guards’ internet usage showed hours of browsing social networks and streaming media.

One 24-year-old guard claimed to have conducted the necessary security checks, though security footage contradicted that claim. LaTasha Poole, 33, who was also part of the Administrative Segregation Unit’s overnight shift, told the Post-Dispatch that it was her first night working there and she didn’t get the necessary training. Poole was accused of watching the movie “Blue Streak” on Netflix and told investigators that she thought it was fine because she was watching it with her supervisor.

Poole, who was eventually fired, was the one who found Garceau in his cell hours later.

“Maybe nobody would have been watching TV that night if we knew that there was somebody who was suicidal,” she told the Post-Dispatch. “Let’s check this guy every 30 minutes. We would have found this guy’s body sooner and maybe could have revived him. When you are dealing with people on medication, that’s something you don’t want to mess with.”

St. Louis police investigated the incident but filed no criminal charges. It’s not the first time an inmate at the facility died under the watch of guards. In January, Demarko Flowers, 22, died of a drug overdose while housed at the center. In August, Von Eugene Nebbitt, 32, died of an apparent combination of opiates and ethanol.