Yet another man dies in custody at the Shasta County Jail
The identity of the decedent has not been announced. His death demonstrates a troubling Shasta Jail mortality rate, much higher than that of other counties with comparable populations.
Editor’s note: Hours after this story was published, the Shasta County Sheriff confirmed the decedent as 46-year-old Nathan Arthur Webster. Court records indicate that he was charged with felony counts of obstructing and resisting arrest and parole violations. He was expected to undergo a mental competency hearing in October after the courts declared doubt about his mental health in August.
Another man died while in the custody of the Shasta County Jail, the second person to be discovered unresponsive in their cell in 2025 and the sixth to die in Shasta’s custody in the past 21 months. It’s been more than 48 hours since the man was discovered unresponsive in his cell, but the Sheriff’s office has still not released his name. Public Information Officer Timothy Mapes said that as of 4 p.m. Tuesday that the Sheriff’s Office is still “pending notification to the next of kin.”
The Sheriff’s brief press release earlier this week offered few details except confirmation the dead inmate is a “male subject.” On Sunday, jail staff discovered the anonymous inmate unresponsive in his cell during a routine check. Medical staff declared him dead after attempting to perform life-saving measures, the Sheriff’s Office said.
According to the Sheriff’s policy handbook, all in-custody deaths must be reported to the California Attorney General within 10 days. Jails are also required to conduct a report on the death within 10 days and submit it to the Board of State and Community Corrections within 60 days.
Additionally, counties must list online anyone who dies while in jail custody within 10 days, as outlined by Assembly Bill 2761, noting their race, age, gender, and where the person died within the facility. California’s Federal Death in Custody Reporting Act’s implementation plan cites that if a Sheriff isn’t able to reach the deceased’s next of kin within 10 days, they can delay the publication of their information online for an additional 10 days while they continue to make a good-faith effort.
Since AB 2761 went into effect in 2023, data on Shasta County’s website lists five deceased men. Only three of the reported deaths indicate the cause: two are classified as accidental fentanyl overdoses and the other as a “natural” death that occurred due to compounding health conditions. The other two causes of death have yet to be determined by the county coroner, despite it being over a year and nine months, respectively, since the deaths occurred.
Three of the men died in their cells and another in the medical unit. The cause of the 2024 death for Manuel Galindo Diaz, whose death occurred while he was in a sobering cell on charges of public intoxication, is still undetermined by the coroner.
Of those who died, three were charged with crimes and were serving sentences, in contrast to the aforementioned Diaz, who was sobering up when he died, and the latest death listed on the site is from January 2025: Juan Moreno, who was awaiting trial. Three of the five deceased men were Hispanic, one was Native American and one was white.
A report produced by the Shasta County Grand Jury in May found that in the past six years, the number of deaths at the Shasta County Jail significantly surpassed other similar sized counties such as Madera, Butte and Imperial. Assessing the five deaths that occurred during a 13 month period between December 2023 and January 2024, the Grand Jury concluded that the deaths “were due to lifestyle, not because of jail procedures,” but that the reason for the jail’s higher-than-average mortality could not be determined with the data they were given.
The Grand Jury’s report fails to make mention of Wellpath, the recently bankrupt private contractor that provides medical services at the Shasta County jail. In recent years, Wellpath has faced over 1,000 lawsuits across the country, including numerous multimillion dollar settlements for allegedly substandard healthcare.
Just this June, Alameda County and Wellpath paid a combined $10 million to the family of an incarcerated man who was found dead in his cell at the Santa Rita jail in Dublin. Body camera footage revealed that nobody had checked on the deceased Maurice Monk for days. He suffered from hypertensive disorder, schizophrenia and diabetes. When he was eventually discovered deceased, there was a pool of urine at the foot of his bed and multiple unconsumed meals and medication.
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So sorry but this death was karma at it’s finest. Pedos are monsters not people.
You Live By The Sword. You Die By The Sword. We’re Running Out Of Room for Criminals. Would You Rather That They Steal, Rape, Rob, Murder Your Loved One’s! We Already Have Our Own Criminals. Then They Started Pouring Into Our Country. If You Feel For Them. Why Don’t You Invite Them To Live With You? Death Is A Criminals Only Escape. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina….Waaa….Waaa. Babies. Bye…. Bye… Bye.👍🤠🤬
I know from both personal experience and experiences of others that the conditions within the jail are inhumane to say the least. Of course the Grand Jury is not going to say anything bad about what goes on in the jail, because honestly unless you are incarcerated yourself you are not going to see the stuff that happens when nobody from the outside is there to see. The officers and staff are on their best behavior when they know they’re being investigated, just like anyone else would be. They do not want the public to think they are the bad guys so they portray theirselves as heroes. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good people who work inside the jail,well at least one that I know of. Not all cops are bad, but they do things out of the public eye behind those concrete walls and nobody except for the men and women who are incarcerated will ever know what truly goes on. The medical staff is unprofessional, rude and they do not seem to know what they’re doing. I was hospitalized for a UTI and after I was released I was arrested on bogus accusations, my now ex husband who is 6’4″ and 160lbs+ , claimed I beat him up but I was the only one with bruises and marks on my body. Anyways, when I got to the jail they asked me all sorts of questions about my health etc. I informed them that I was just released from the hospital for a severe UTI and needed my anti biotic which they could confirm by calling the hospital ,which they refused to do. I also told them I am lactose intolerant. They refused to give me my anti biotic and I had to beg and plead to see their doctor hoping she would see how sick I was and give me my anti biotic, but I was wrong. I was so sick I was throwing up violently in the holding cell waiting to see the doctor and the other inmates were banging on the door trying to tell the officers I was really sick but for over an hour they did nothing. Then, when the door I opened the doctor said to me” Oh,I guess you really are sick. ” She took me in the exam room and I was in so much pain I could not sit still. She yelled at me and told me I needed to sit still after I explained that I was unable to. She said to me” Well maybe you should tell your boyfriend to stop cumming inside of you then!” I was in total shock. I could not believe how unprofessional, inconsiderate, rude and just nasty that so called doctor was to me. She also yelled at me ” I’m NOT giving you any drugs!” I told her I had never done drugs nor was I asking her for any drugs. I was asking for my antibiotics that the hospital prescribed to me before I was released after being admitted for a few days. It took them five days before they would give me an antibiotic and then they were trying to make me take some other pill which they would not tell me what it was and I refused to take it which passed them off but I told them I do not take medications unless they are prescribed by my doctor and I know what they are. They didn’t like that at all. So they skipped giving me lunch and right before dinner time they brought me a paper sack with what looked like a half eaten rotten bologna sandwich in it and a carton of milk that was expired which I could not drink anyways because of my lactose intolerance. When I was in a medical cell waiting to receive my antibiotics there were inmates pounding on their cells screaming and they just ignored them like they weren’t there. There was one officer reading the newspaper and he asked another officer if he remembered some person they obviously had frequent contact with and he starts laughing and telling the other officer ” Well, we won’t have to worry about that one anymore, someone happened to find him dead.” Disgusting! They referred to inmates with disabilities or mental health issues as “The animals”. They purposely place inmates they do not care for in cells with violent inmates. They placed a disabled veteran in a cell that they took a man with severe mental health issues out of and told him to clean it without any cleaning supplies. The cell was covered from top to bottom with feces from the previous inmate. This is not ok! They do not follow the law in the jail,they have their own law they follow and that inmates are to follow and if they do not follow their law they are severely punished by sometimes being sent to “the hole” for months or until they decide to let them out. They keep certain inmates in their cells 23 hours a day. They act like they do not know why there are so many mentally ill people in Shasta County, but they are the cause of it. They close the mental health facility and they build that huge eye sore of a court house which cost $203,006,000 because they claimed the old court house wasn’t good enough and wasn’t safe for the employees. There needs to be some serious changes to their priority list. If they really wanted to make Shasta County a safer and more pleasant place to live they would not waste money on new court houses and police departments. They would use that money to provide services to those with mental health issues instead of throwing them in jail and giving them outrageous fines they will never be able to pay because most of them are homeless. They would implement a program for those suffering from addiction and provide services to them and while in the program they could teach them things like life skills, healthy coping options that don’t require taking any form of pills or any other medications unless it is absolutely needed and there is no other option, teach them different trades so that when they are released they have the skills necessary to obtain employment and even help them with finding a job in the trade they’ve learned. Things like this should be their focus for a solution to the issues currently happening in Shasta County. Instead of arresting the homeless and throwing them in jail ,put them into groups that go around to homeless camps and other areas that are full of trash and have them clean it up instead of the city doing it. This just might make them not want to leave their areas full of trash and they would learn the responsibility of keeping their area clean and free of health hazards. Plus other people wouldn’t have to clean up their mess, its a win win situation. If they did things like this I bet Shasta county would not have such high crime rates, the jail wouldn’t always be full to the max capacity and people suffering from drug or alcohol addiction would be given the chance to live a better life.
Well said I agree the mental health system was taken out because they don’t want people coming out and saying the truth about all of the abuse and the unjust things that go on in this County the reason it was removed was cuz too many people were saying same stories so how could it possibly be untrue so if you just get rid of the people who can come the witnesses of testimonies of all the injustice you have a system that fails the people take out the mental health because eventually somebody’s going to notice that all the things that he’s homeless people and other people coming in to mental health or or expressing their stating may actually be going on in your county it could cause a bigger investigation than anybody wants to touch they ask me they just set it up perfectly I taken out the mental health why would you remove mental health services in a county that’s known for homeless and mental health issues during the peak of his population growth and Drug addiction and drug use amongst homeless they want to turn them into criminals rather than understand that their patients and human beings