Penobscot County Jail inmate attempts suicide

BANGOR – A Bangor man charged with threatening to kill his former girlfriend and later attacking another man with a knife tried to take his own life Thursday at the Penobscot County Jail where he was awaiting trial.

A corrections officer passing a cell she had checked eight minutes earlier found Jeffrey McKenney, 39, hanging from a noose he fashioned out of a bedsheet, a jail official said Thursday.

Corrections officers performed CPR on McKenney until a Bangor Fire Department ambulance crew could arrive and take the man to Eastern Maine Medical Center, Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross said by phone from the hospital.

Ross, who met with McKenney’s family members at the Bangor hospital, said McKenney still had a pulse but it appeared he was in dire condition.

“He is alive and it is critical,” Ross said of McKenney’s condition.

Although McKenney was facing criminal threatening and assault charges stemming from two incidents last week, Ross said there was nothing to indicate McKenney was planning to take his life. Corrections officers familiar with McKenney and medical and mental health staff didn’t note anything to suggest he was suicidal, Ross said.

“There was no indication there was anything going on there,” Ross said.

McKenney was being housed in the general population area in Block C where cells containing double bunks are located off a larger common area.

A corrections officer checked on McKenney at 4:15 p.m. and again 15 minutes later, Ross said. She was passing by his cell about eight minutes after her last check when she noticed toilet paper blocking off the glass window in the cell’s steel door, a violation of jail policy.

It was then that the corrections officer discovered McKenney hanging from the door, suspended above the floor by a ripped piece of bedsheet hung over the upper door hinge. The corrections officer called for help, and with the assistance of another jail inmate, McKenney was brought down and CPR begun, Ross said.

McKenney still had a pulse inside the jail and on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, Ross said.

Family members were called to the hospital, where they met with Ross and the Rev. Robert Carlson, the department’s chaplain, who Ross said sought to console the family and provide them with any resources they needed.

The incident will spark an internal investigation, and Ross said Thursday that details of the suicide attempt were still considered preliminary. Ross said records and evidence have been seized and will be secured.

Officials with the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office were seen leaving the Bangor hospital with several paper bags believed to contain clothing taken from the man.

Ross said he could recall only a few inmates who had committed suicide at the jail, but noted 25 instances where quick responses by jail staff averted deaths in the past three years. The jail annually logs about 1,500 suicide assessments, where medical staff review inmates who have threatened suicide or indicated they were considering it.

On Nov. 29, McKenney allegedly used a box cutter to force his former girlfriend to walk with him to Hayford Park in Bangor, where ultimately she convinced him to let her go.

One day later, he allegedly pulled a knife on an employee of Union Street Citgo, where his former girlfriend worked. The employee suffered superficial wounds and managed to subdue McKenney until the police arrived.

A probable cause hearing has been set for Jan. 5.