13-04-2025
Family questions jail's supervision following man's death
Two inmates at the Gaston County Detention Center died in March, according to jail records.
The first inmate, a 44-year-old woman, died March 9, by suicide while incarcerated at the jail on drug charges.
According to a report the jail submitted from the state, an officer had checked on her at 1:06 p.m., and she was found "in distress or dead" at 1:45 p.m., 39 minutes later. Guards are required to check on inmates twice an hour, with not more than 40 minutes between checks.
The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating her death. A Gaston County Detention Center official declined to say whether or not the woman was under a special watch, which would have required her to be checked on more frequently. The Gazette is not identifying the woman because she died by suicide.
The second inmate, 27-year-old Shawn Allen Sanders, was incarcerated on a variety of charges, including robbery with a dangerous weapon and first-degree burglary. Sanders was found "in distress or dead" at 10:33 p.m. March 23, according to a report from the jail. A guard had checked on him at 10:09 p.m., just 24 minutes earlier. The report did not indicate what condition Sanders was in when the guard checked on him at that time.
Megan Sanders, Sanders' wife, said she last spoke with him at 3:30 p.m. the day he died.
"He was perfectly fine. Our last phone call ended with him telling me how much he loved me, and he was talking about fixing my car. The phone went out. He never made it to call me back," she said.
Please enable Javascript to view this content.
Hospital records from CaroMont Health that Megan Sanders shared indicate that Sanders may have taken fentanyl. Sanders was hospitalized after "an unknown period of unresponsiveness," which led to brain death, according to the medical records. He was pronounced dead at the hospital on March 26.
Megan Sanders questioned why jail officials didn't know how long Sanders had been unresponsive if they were supposed to be checking on him.
"He was neglected, and they didn't do their job," she said. "He was so healthy. I was able to donate all his organs, even his heart. It was just his brain. The doctor said his brain had swelled so much there was no more room left for it to swell."
Capt. Jason Davis with the Gaston County Sheriff's Office said that Sanders, like an other inmate, only required two checks per hour with no more than 40 minutes between them.
Megan Sanders said that she and Shawn Sanders have an 18-month-old son named Ethan.
Sanders and the woman who died March 9 were the first jail inmates to die in 2025. The Gaston County Sheriff's Office said that two jail inmates died in 2024 as well.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Gaston County jail inmates found dead
