A high-profile defendant who died in Las Vegas police custody this week had risk factors that make an inmate more likely to take his own life.
David Vander Meer, 49, died before he was due to appear in court to face extradition to Utah on a murder charge in connection with the death of his wife 20 years ago at Zion National Park, a judge announced Thursday.
In a news release the same day, the Metropolitan Police Department said a 49-year-old male inmate accused of being a fugitive from another state was taken to University Medical Center with “self-sustained injuries” and pronounced dead.
Metro, which operates the Clark County Detention Center, said the inmate had been in custody at the jail since Monday, the day Vander Meer was arrested.
Experts said inmate suicides often occur shortly after a person is taken into custody.
Vander Meer had no prior criminal record in Clark County, court records show. He held positions of trust, including youth pastor, school counselor and yoga instructor.
A defendant in Vander Meer’s position — without a record and with professional accomplishments — is at higher risk for suicide, said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.
People accused of high-profile crimes also are more at risk.
“Someone like this must realize that life as he knew it is over and this is not a life that he’s familiar with,” Deitch said. “Jails are terrible places, and they’re traumatizing for everybody, but for someone who has never seen that or been exposed to it in any way, it’s got to be just feeling like an alternate universe.”
Clark County coroner’s office records show that 90 inmates at the county jail have died in the past 12 years. Nine were ruled to have died by suicide.
Dr. Anasseril Daniel is a psychiatrist who served as the director of psychiatric services for the Missouri Department of Corrections from 2000 to 2007. He offered a similar observation, noting that inmates who previously were held in high regard in society, then accused of serious offenses such as sex crimes, are particularly vulnerable.
“There is a complete change in freedom, social status, mental distress, agony, loss of dignity and probably acute anxiety of what might happen to them,” Daniel said.
The criminal case against Vander Meer included claims that he had a sexual relationship with an underage girl.
Metro has not disclosed the exact circumstances of Vander Meer’s death but did release a statement.
“We are committed to maintaining Sheriff Kevin McMahill’s standard of injecting humanity into everything we do, not only on patrol but inside the walls of all of our (Detention Services Division) facilities,” Assistant Sheriff Fred Haas said.
Steps to prevent suicides
Though there are still unknowns about how Vander Meer died, experts said jails should take steps to prevent inmates from killing themselves.
Daniel has written two books about suicides in jails and how to prevent them. He thinks roughly 60 to 70 percent of jail suicides are preventable.
Jail staff should be aware of the potential for suicide in high-profile cases and conduct checks on such inmates every 10 minutes or less, he said.
It is also important that inmates under suicide watch be placed in a cell with no hooks or places to anchor something to hang themselves with, he said.
“In a civilized society, we have to protect the rights of individuals, even though they are alleged to have committed a crime,” the psychiatrist said.
To prevent suicides, Deitch said, a jail should have a good intake screening form to identify if someone is at high risk of suicide.
If they are found to be at high risk, she said, they should immediately be sent to a mental health professional at the jail so they can be assessed for immediate treatment or to determine what supervision is necessary.
“When inmates are first brought into CCDC they are screened by an EMT who takes basic medical readings including blood pressure and heart rate,” Metro said in its statement. “After booking, inmates receive a full medical screening which includes evaluations of their mental health. They are asked if they are feeling suicidal.”
The department also touted its accreditations, saying it achieved re-accreditation through the American Correctional Association in 2025, with an overall compliance score of 99.4 percent.
“This accomplishment reflects sustained adherence to nationally recognized best practices in safety, security, inmate care, staff training and constitutional compliance,” police said.
Attorney Stephen Stubbs, who represents plaintiffs in civil rights lawsuits against Metro, said the agency has good procedures that work most of the time, including monitoring inmates, looking for signs that a person is suicidal and putting inmates into protective custody until they can receive help.
Stubbs has personal experience with the process.
He said that when he was arrested for what he describes as telling his client not to talk to police, the Clark County Detention Center treated him as a suicidal person.
A supervisor and nurse talked to him with the arresting officer present, he said. He denied he was suicidal, but they said that based on their training, they thought he showed signs that indicated otherwise. He was eventually released, and the related criminal case, which was filed in 2018, was dismissed.
“I think they actually did that just to mess with me, because I was mad, but I wasn’t suicidal,” he said.
Prior jail deaths
Between 2013 and 2025, 86 inmates died in the custody of the Clark County Detention Center’s main facility in downtown Las Vegas, according to data from the Clark County coroner’s office analyzed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Another four inmates died in custody at the jail’s facility in the northern Las Vegas Valley.
The majority of the jail’s inmates died of natural or accidental causes, and seven inmates have died in homicides between 2013 and 2025. In many cases, an inmate died after being hospitalized.
Records show that the last time an inmate was found to have died by suicide at the jail was in October 2024.
Lincoln Boe, an 18-year-old murder suspect who was accused of fatally stabbing a woman, hanged himself with a sheet in a shower at the jail, according to his autopsy report. He died while hospitalized days later.
According to autopsy reports, the majority of the jail inmates who have died by suicide in recent years have hanged themselves.
Most jail suicides are hangings, said Paul Parker, a consultant who investigates in-custody deaths and a former Clark County assistant coroner. Some inmates also will jump from a tier to the floor below, he said.
Investigating a jail suicide
Autopsy records and previous news reports showed no evidence that any of the jail’s inmates found to have died by suicide in recent years were receiving increased checks for mental health reasons.
In 2014, 46-year-old Kathy Renee Priest was deemed “not at risk” for suicide and placed in the general medical population, despite medical notes documenting her history of suicide attempts, the Review-Journal previously reported. She died by suicide 17 days after she was booked at the jail.
Her hanging death prompted officials to remove from jail cells a mechanism on a wash basin, described as a knob, that Priest had used to harm herself.
In 2018, 51-year-old Lantze Eichinger fatally injured himself at the jail when he jumped from the second floor, according to coroner’s office records. He had a history of multiple prior suicide attempts, but his autopsy report did not indicate if he was considered a suicide risk.
After a suicide in jail, Parker said, there should be a couple of investigations, including an investigation to see if anyone committed any crimes that led to the death and an internal investigation into whether any policies were violated or should be changed.
There also will be a coroner investigation, which Parker said should be independent of law enforcement but will draw on initial information from law enforcement.
Parker said every death should be investigated as a homicide until proved otherwise. That’s to ensure that such a death was actually a suicide and that no one else played a role, he said.
Investigations also are important for broader reasons, said Parker, including to determine if anything could have prevented the death, to make recommendations for practices moving forward, and to ensure that there are no systemic issues.
“They have a responsibility for the well-being of people in their custody,” he said.
If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the Lifeline network at 988. Live chat is available at 988lifeline.org.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com.
