Sensitive subject warning: This story contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis and needs help, you can call the Summit County crisis line at 330-434-9144 or call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Cuyahoga Falls police arrested Craig Hebble for a drunken driving charge a couple weeks before Christmas in 2020.
It was the third time in 10 years Hebble faced that charge, this time after wrecking his motorcycle on a side street yards from his home.
At the police station, Hebble, 57, was slurring his words, angry and refusing to take a breath test, so officers put him in a jail cell, hoping he’d sober up and calm down so they could finish booking him.
On the walk to the cell, Hebble told police he planned to kill himself.
Fifteen minutes after the cell door locked, police found Hebble hanging from a noose he had tied from a bedsheet.
Hebble was one of at least 219 people who died at Ohio’s local jails between 2020 and 2024, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, which tracks those deaths and their causes.
Of those, nearly a third – 66 – died by suicide, which is the leading cause of death at U.S. jails.
Many of those deaths often go unnoticed by the public, receiving scant attention in the media, which rarely reports on individual cases of suicide.
An analysis by a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice in 2022 called jail suicides “an overlooked national crisis for years.” Suicide prevention groups are now working with organizations like the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCH) to improve jailhouse screening, staff training and other measures to reduce these deaths.
Unlike prisons, where people convicted of serious crimes often spend years or decades behind bars, jails generally hold people for shorter stays − people arrested for minor crimes or other awaiting trial or sentencing.
Richard Forbus, a former jail commander and spokesman for the NCCH, said many arrive with myriad untreated medical needs, from mental illness to chronic conditions like diabetes.
Many, he said, are at high risk for death by suicide.
“You never know who is coming through that door,” he said.
'I'm gonna kill myself,' inmate warns officers
A man and woman, their 3-year-old son and their dog were out for an evening stroll Dec. 9, 2020, when they saw their neighbor, Craig Hebble, roar by on his blue Harley Davidson Roadster.
A few minutes later, they came upon Hebble sprawled in the street next to his motorcycle where Van Doren Drive dead-ends into Purdue Street on the city’s north side.
While the woman called police, her husband helped Hebble to his feet and walked Hebble and his Harley home, which was three houses from the intersection.
Hebble − described by neighbors as heavily intoxicated – was drinking a Budweiser and had a small bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey when police arrived at his house and arrested him on a drunk driving charge.
Records show he had been arrested dozens of times before on misdemeanor charges in Akron, Barberton, Cuyahoga Falls and Stow. Almost all of the charges involved alcohol or drugs.
At the police station, Hebble was slurring his words. He repeatedly declined to have paramedics assess any injuries from the motorcycle wreck, police said.
He also declined to take a breath test to measure the alcohol level in his body, and, police said, Hebble answered most of their questions by responding, “[Expletive] you.”
When Hebble balled up his fists, they decided to move him into one of 10 cells in the city jail, which is attached to the police department, and try to finish booking him after he sobered up.
On the walk there, Hebble told police he was suicidal, according to a Cuyahoga Falls’ police investigation into his death.
“I’m gonna kill myself,” Hebble told officers. “I’m gonna hang myself.”
Officers would later say they did not hear Hebble threaten suicide, though his words were apparently picked up by surveillance video, an internal investigation revealed.
Once Hebble was locked in cell No. 5, he shook the cell door and made another threat: “I’m gonna bust my skull.”
That was at 7:41 p.m.
An officer who heard that threat about his skull went back and checked on Hebble three minutes later and saw no injuries on Hebble’s face, records show.
At 7:56 p.m., when a different officer arrived to do an hourly check of the inmates, a man in the cell next to Hebble’s told him Hebble “sounded like he was choking and fumbling around,” police records said.
When the officer looked into cell No. 5, he saw Hebble hanging by a white bedsheet tied to his cell door.
The officer called for help, but police couldn’t reach Hebble until they could cut down his body and open his cell door.
An officer used a knife to cut through the sheet, and police tried to revive Hebble with CPR until paramedics arrived and took Hebble by ambulance to a hospital.
But it was too late.
Hebble, who warned police he would hang himself, was dead.
Expert: Police should take self-harm threats seriously
Early the next morning, Cuyahoga Falls police sent an email to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), notifying them of the jail death, which triggers a state review.
In June, after looking at jail video of Hebble, officer logs, and other reports, the ODRC found that the Cuyahoga Falls police were out of compliance with 17 state standards for jails in its categories. Cuyahoga Falls has 10 cells that can hold inmates up to 12 days. About 223 people were incarcerated there between 2022-2023.
ODRC also said the department repeatedly broke its own “policies, procedures and practices” involving Hebble’s brief incarceration.
Many of the ODRC’s comments are blacked out, particularly its findings on jail policies involving inmates and mental health.
But among other things, the ODRC determined Cuyahoga Falls jail officials:
- Failed to complete an assessment of Hebble’s needs before deciding how he should be housed inside the jail.
- Failed before and after the suicide to perform observation checks of inmates every 60 minutes as required.
- Failed to take action when an inmate made a verbal complaint.
- Failed to take immediate action when Hebble was found hanging, saying it took more than two minutes for medical services to be rendered.
The police department has since made all changes recommended by ODRC, Cuyahoga Falls Police Capt. Gary Merton Jr. said. The department also met with the city medical director and updated its suicide risk assessment, pre-incarceration questionnaire and visual observation checklist.
Merton said police also reviewed the policies and reinforced proper protocol. There has been one suicide attempt at the jail since Hebble's death, and that person was unharmed and taken to a hospital, he said.
"We are committed to the well-being and safety of individuals in our jail and continually refine our policies to ensure that their needs are met with care and respect," Merton said.
Forbus of NCCH was unaware of the Hebble case but said that anyone who arrives at jail inebriated should be assessed for suicide risk.
“Alcohol is a depressant, opioids, too, but alcohol especially,” he said. “It’s a huge warning sign when someone comes in drunk.”
If a jail inmate is determined to be at risk, jailers often take away most things they might use to hurt themselves, including bed sheets and their own clothing.
Inmates instead wear a suicide smock, a sleeveless gown specially designed to prevent people from using it as a noose. On top of that, he said, jail officials watch that inmate.
The other obvious red flag is Hebble telling police he was going to kill himself. He even told them how he planned to do it.
Forbus said police should take any threats of self-harm seriously.
“But they probably just thought, 'He’s just drunk, he’s just talking smack,'” Forbus said. “But if you’re getting [suicide prevention] training, it’s not just talk.”
Suicide prevention starts with ongoing training and a staff culture that values preventing self-harm.
“You can have all the policies you want, but culture eats policy for breakfast,” Forbus said.
When he went to work in Las Vegas as a young corrections officer, Forbus said he had training to prevent jail suicides, but some of the older officers said it was no use. If people wanted to hurt themselves, they’d find a way.
It wasn’t true, Forbus said. It took a captain at the department whose son had mental health and substance abuse issues to dig in and work for years to change that culture.
“It’s easy to say suicide is not preventable,” he said, “but we should do everything we can to prevent it.”
Troubled past leads to tragic ending
A couple hours after Hebble was declared dead, a Cuyahoga Falls police sergeant went to his home to notify the woman who owned it.
When he told the woman he was there to deliver bad news, the woman asked if Hebble was dead, a police report said.
It’s not clear if the woman thought Hebble had killed himself or died in some other way.
The woman, who described herself as Hebble’s landlord, told police there were only two people to notify:Hebble’s sister, who lived in Lorain County, and a community service worker.
None of them returned messages left by the Akron Beacon Journal for this story.
In the weeks and months that followed Hebble’s death, there was no obituary, no burial announcement, no lawsuit seeking compensation for Hebble’s death in custody.
Over the years, Hebble appears to have lived in the shadows, often drunk near Akron, the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, a group frequently credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Records show Hebble faced 18 charges in Barberton Municipal Court, 14 charges in Akron Municipal Court and 13 charges in Stow Municipal Court since the late 1990s.
He’d been kicked out of Akron's Oriana House (where he was treated for substance abuse), Applebee’s in Stow and St. Thomas Hospital, where he was told not to come back unless there was an emergency.
One of his Hebble’s earliest run-ins with the law in Summit County was exactly 22 years prior to the date of his suicide.
On Dec. 9, 1998, Barberton police arrested him at a bar.
Police said he was drunk and broke out the window of a car, records show.
Hebble faced numerous misdemeanor charges, including menacing, filed after an officer said he worried Hebble would hurt him.
There's nothing in records to show Hebble acted on that officer's fear.
And 22 years later, it was Hebble who ended up hurting himself.
Akron Beacon Journal reporter Amanda Garrett can be reached at agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.
