Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
UTAH STATE PRISON — A prison inmate died Friday, and officials say evidence suggests self-inflicted wounds.
Charles Matthews, 26, had been serving time at the Utah State Prison since January 2008 for convictions of first-degree felony aggravated robbery and third-degree felony failure to stop at the command of a police officer, according to prison spokesman Steve Gehrke.
In March 2007, Matthews tried to break into a home in West Haven and demanded the homeowner's wallet at gunpoint. When the homeowner shut the door, Matthews got into a car driven by a woman and fled to Ogden, according to reports. The vehicle crashed, the woman was arrested and Matthews holed up in a home for several hours, requiring SWAT negotiators to get him out peacefully.
Matthews was housed in a non-shared cell in a medium security area at the time of the incident. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 11 p.m., Gehrke said.
The Unified Police Department is investigating the incident at the jail, and the state medical examiner's office has yet to declare an official cause of death.
