Garner Inmate Dies In Apparent Suicide

State police and the state Department of Correction (DOC) are investigating the apparent suicide of a 25-year-old male Garner Correctional Institution inmate at the high-security prison on Nunnawauk Road on April 7.

At approximately 1 pm, during a routine check of locked inmate cells, prison staff members discovered inmate William Packard of Bloomfield to be unresponsive in his single-occupancy cell, a DOC spokeswoman said.

Packard was found with one end of a bed sheet tied around his neck and the other end of the sheet secured to a vent, the spokeswoman said.

Correction officers and prison medical personnel then began emergency life saving measures and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in an attempt to revive Packard, the spokeswoman said.

The Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps was dispatched to Garner at 1:17 pm, after which it transported Packard to Danbury Hospital.

Packard was pronounced dead at 2:20 pm, the DOC spokeswoman said.

Packard was serving a 3½-year prison sentence on a violation of probation conviction. His sentence started last July 1. The underlying conviction, from which the probation violation conviction stems, was not available. 

The exact manner and cause of Packard’s death will be determined by the state medical examiner, according to DOC.

Packard’s death is the first apparent suicide to have occurred in the state prison system in 2004, according to DOC.

Preliminary information leads investigators to believe that the death was self-inflicted, with no criminal involvement, according to state police.