BANGOR – A Penobscot County Jail inmate in custody on a drunken driving charge hanged himself early Thursday morning, the second suicide death of an inmate in less than four months.

A corrections officer and sergeant found Mark Edward Howard, 46, of Eddington hanging from a railing by a bedsheet after 4 a.m. during a routine check of the cellblock, Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross told reporters Thursday.

Howard was in a general population cell and had been let out of his cell to go to the bathroom a short time before he was discovered, the sheriff said.

When the corrections officer, joined by a sergeant, returned as part of a 15-minute check, they found Howard. The officers cut him down and administered CPR and used a defibrillator, although Ross said Howard was pronounced dead at Eastern Maine Medical Center.

Howard had been in the jail since July 19 unable to make $250 bail for a drunken driving arrest. Ross said the Eddington man had given no indication of his intention to take his life.

Screening procedures when inmates are first brought in help identify those with suicidal ideas, and inmates who do express them later are assessed and placed in a more secure cell when necessary, he said.

As is routine, the death is under investigation by the state Department of Corrections and the Bangor Police Department, as well as being the subject of an internal review.

Ross said the incidents of suicides and attempted suicides seem to be increasing in recent years, both inside and outside the jail. He said that there have been 30 attempted suicides in the past four years and Howard is the fourth death in that time. Before that, Charles Mushero, 47, died in April at EMMC three days after he tried to hang himself.

Among the general public, law enforcement agencies in the county have handled 29 suicide threats in 26 days, with 10 actual attempts and three deaths, Ross said.

Ross told reporters that it is a growing problem that is occurring not just in jail and it has no easy solutions, despite increased efforts by the jail and social service agencies to try to address it.

“I don’t know what the answer is to this, but I continue to be vocal,” Ross said. “I continue to be concerned. I continued to be discouraged because there is no good ending.

“There’s no good outcome for anybody in this.”