A prisoner who died while in a Bennington Police Department jail cell March 23 overdosed on drugs he concealed when taken into custody, state police investigators reported yesterday, May 15.
The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office has completed its autopsy findings regarding the March 23, 2023, death of Darrel Jones while in custody at the Bennington Police Department. The office determined that the cause of Jones’s death was acute mixed drug intoxication including fentanyl, heroin and cocaine, and the manner of death was an accident.
The Vermont State Police investigation into this incident concluded that Jones had drugs concealed in his person when he was taken into custody by the Bennington Police Department. He then ingested a large amount of drugs while in a holding cell before he experienced extreme medical distress and died in the cell. VSP has completed its investigation and forwarded the matter to the Bennington County State’s Attorney’s Office for review.
Jones, 33, had resided most recently in Albany, New York, and in Pennsylvania. He was one of three people taken into custody at about 3:50 p.m. March 23 as Bennington officers carried out a court-ordered search warrant related to a drug investigation at the Apple Valley Inn on U.S. Route 7.
Jones was taken to the Bennington Police Department and placed in a holding cell, where he was discovered unresponsive at about 4:40 p.m. Members of the police department provided emergency medical care and called first responders, but lifesaving efforts were unsuccessful, and the man was pronounced dead at 5:19 p.m. at the police station.