Inmate of Jail Dies 42 Hours After Arrest

A 31-year-old Orange County Jail inmate died at UC Irvine Medical Center on Saturday, 42 hours after he was arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of PCP, authorities said.

The cause of Terry English’s death has not yet been determined, a coroner’s spokesman said. But the Tustin man’s brother, Larry English, said that when a hospital spokesman informed him of the death Saturday morning, he was told that his brother had died from liver or kidney disease or from an injury to the head.

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office, which is investigating the death, refused to confirm or deny that English had suffered a head injury and declined to answer other questions about the former inmate’s condition, referring all inquiries to the sheriff’s office, which issued a press release.

Housed in Medical Ward

Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Conner said English had been arrested by Santa Ana police and was booked Friday morning into Orange County Jail, shortly after midnight. English was housed in the medical ward and was discovered lying on the ward’s bathroom floor by a nurse at 1:50 a.m. Saturday, Conner said. Paramedics transported English to UC Irvine Medical Center, where he died at 10:20 a.m., Conner added.

Conner said he did not know why English was lying on the floor or whether he was unconscious when found. The sheriff’s official also did not have information on English’s physical condition when he was booked or why he was taken to the medical ward.

A supervisor in the jail’s medical ward Saturday declined to comment on the matter.

Santa Ana Police Lt. Bob Jordan said police were called about 4 p.m. Thursday when a man later identified as English was seen jumping over the back fences of houses in the 400 block of South Diamond Street. Police said they apprehended English about half an hour later in the backyard of a house in the 600 block of South Wood Street, a couple of blocks away, and arrested him on suspicion of being under the influence of phencyclidine (PCP) he said. The suspect was taken to the station, then transported to the jail about 10 p.m., Jordan said.

Jordan said the police report does not indicate that English offered any resistance at the time of the arrest.

Vernice Wilburn, who lives on South Diamond Street, said he called police Thursday when a man jumped over his fence into his yard and then fled.

“He was like a wild man, like he was on some kind of drugs,” Wilburn said. The man carried “something in his hand, like a cube” or a vial, he said, but didn’t stay long before jumping over the fence into other yards.

Wilburn said he tried unsuccessfully to catch the man.

“You couldn’t talk to him. He was a wild man. . . . Yeah, I was afraid of him. And he was afraid of me, too,” Wilburn said. The man’s hair was soaked with sweat, and it appeared he had been running for a long time, he said.

Larry English, 33, said his brother, who went by the nickname of TJ, had used marijuana and a little cocaine before, but he had never known his brother to use PCP.

Released From Chino

His brother added that Terry English had just been released Thursday from the California Institution for Men at Chino, where he had been incarcerated since April for a parole violation. Terry had been convicted of burglary several years ago and had been imprisoned several times since then for parole violations, according to his brother.

Terry had shown up Thursday at his brother’s Tustin home, where he had lived prior to his last parole violation, and the two discussed a musical recording they planned to make together, Larry said, adding that his brother then left to see his girlfriend and parole officer.

“I said, ‘Watch yourself. There’s a lot of narcs (narcotics agents) in Santa Ana, and you don’t want to be going back to jail for drugs,’ ” the elder brother said.

“He (Terry) said, ‘No problem, bro’, I’ll be back,’ ” Larry English recalled.

When Terry did not show up later, his elder brother said he got worried and began calling friends. Another one of English’s brothers, Duane--who was also in the jail--called Friday morning when he heard that Terry had been arrested.

The elder brother said he called Santa Ana police and the jail several times Friday but was unable to get any information. He decided to wait until Saturday morning before trying again, he said.

Brother’s Statement

“But before we could find anything out, they called and they said he was deceased,” Larry English said, adding that he was told his brother had fallen down in jail and then was taken to the Medical Center.

English’s death is being investigated by the district attorney, as are all deaths in which sheriff’s deputies are involved, as the result of a decision by the Board of Supervisors in May.