Denver jailers and police say they need to fix communication gaps between them, with jailers saying they never learned from police that Shimondi Gebreselassie had previously attempted suicide before he hanged himself in his cell.
“This is an unfortunate incident that only demonstrates the need to improve communication,” said Virginia Quiñones, Denver police spokeswoman. “It’s a safety issue for officers and inmates.”
Gebreselassie, 39, was so obsessed with coffee-shop owner Alganesh Meshesha, 37, that when she rejected his romantic advances, he attempted suicide and on Dec. 2 he allegedly fatally stabbed her in the neck, police say.
When Gebreselassie was booked into the Denver County Jail, no suicide precautions were taken because police didn’t tell deputies who run the jail of his suicide attempt, even though they mentioned that fact in an affidavit used to get a warrant signed by a judge, said Bill Lovingier, the jail’s director of corrections.
“The suspect had attempted to take his own life,” homicide Detective David Neil wrote in a Dec. 3 arrest-warrant affidavit. “The suspect stated to (a friend of the victim’s) that he wanted to die since the victim would not have a relationship with him.”
Neil said he “probably did not” contact the jail about the suicide attempt because Gebreselassie was arrested in California and the sheriff’s department brought him back when he was extradited.
But Sgt. Frank Gale, Denver jail spokesman, said deputies did not get a copy of the affidavit.
The arrest form that police pass on to sheriff’s deputies when someone is booked into jail doesn’t have a section where officers can warn jail staff when an inmate is suicidal, violent or mentally ill, Lovingier said.
“It’s an excellent example of the type of information that is pertinent to a person’s incarceration,” Lovingier said Thursday. “It would have been one more thing (psychiatric nurses) could have explored.”
He said that even before the suicide, jail officials had been meeting with police to try to establish a way to warn jailers when a suspect shows signs of mental illness, including speaking incoherently.
A psychiatric nurse interviews each new inmate to see if he or she had ever tried suicide, Lovingier said. Gebreselassie didn’t tell a nurse about the September suicide attempt, he said.
Two months after the murder, Gebreselassie went to the jail’s medical unit and said, “If you keep me here I’ll kill myself,” Lovingier quoted him as saying.
Yet no comprehensive psychiatric tests were given after a nurse learned that the inmate’s chief complaints were his diet and desire to return to high-security building 8, Lovingier said. It was not deemed a serious suicide threat, he said.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
