Dehydration Death of South Carolina Jail Inmate Ruled a Homicide, Autopsy Finds

An autopsy has ruled the death of a South Carolina jail inmate a homicide, finding that Gary "Bubba" Blair, 43, died of profound dehydration after weeks locked alone in a cell at the Chesterfield County Detention Center with the water to his sink shut off. The finding, delivered to Blair's family on Sept. 13 and first reported by Queen City News, has reopened questions about jail oversight and South Carolina's mental-health-treatment backlog that left Blair, who had been declared incompetent to stand trial, waiting behind bars for months instead of in a hospital bed.

Blair was found unresponsive on the floor of his cell in the jail's E Pod on July 24. The autopsy report, finalized 49 days later, lists his cause of death as "profound dehydration … due to deprivation of water" and his manner of death as homicide, according to the family's civil attorney, James "Boo" Moore III. Contributing factors included acute bronchial pneumonia, severe weight loss and pressure sores on his heels consistent with lying on a hard floor for extended periods. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is now investigating the death as a criminal matter, though no one has been charged.

Blair weighed close to 292 pounds when he was booked into the jail in February. At the time of his autopsy, he weighed 185 pounds — a loss of more than 100 pounds over roughly five months. He spent 181 days in the Chesterfield County jail after a circuit court judge found him incompetent to stand trial and, on June 3, ordered the state's Office of Mental Health to place him in a restoration program. That placement never happened. A spokeswoman for the state's Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, which oversees court-ordered competency treatment, told Queen City News the agency is carrying a roughly nine-month backlog for beds statewide, meaning defendants like Blair effectively serve months in county jail before any treatment begins.

How Blair ended up in a cell for six months

Chesterfield County Sheriff's deputies arrested Blair on Feb. 22 on a charge of impersonating a law enforcement officer after he showed up at his sister's home wearing a sheriff's office golf shirt, a security-guard badge, handcuffs and pepper spray. His family has said he was in the midst of a mental health crisis after a change to his psychiatric medication. A court-ordered evaluation later found him not competent to stand trial, though examiners believed he could likely be restored to competency with treatment.

Instead of being transferred for care, Blair remained in the county jail's protective-custody pod, housed alone. In handwritten letters to his father and to the judge overseeing his case — the letter to the judge, dated May 13, was returned undelivered because of an address error — Blair described going without regular meals, showers and water. "I've lost about 90 pounds so far. I'm starving to death in here; only two meals a day," he wrote to his father on April 22. "I also have to drink from my toilet and no mattress to sleep on, only a hard ground."

Inmates housed near Blair told Queen City News that jail staff kept him locked in his cell around the clock and that the water to his sink had been cut off. Several said they watched him drink from his toilet, and that they passed him small amounts of water through the food-tray slot in his cell door using an empty potato-chip bag, though most of it spilled before reaching him.

Who is affected

Blair's death has drawn attention to conditions inside a jail that Sheriff Cambo Streater has separately described as overburdened. The facility is rated for 127 inmates but has recently held between 140 and 183 at a time, according to county officials, forcing the county to pay to house female inmates elsewhere. Streater fired Jail Administrator Troy Ellerbe on July 29, five days after Blair's death, without publicly explaining the reason. The Chesterfield County Council is now weighing a roughly $50 million bond to replace the more than 50-year-old facility, funded either through a temporary sales tax or a property tax increase.

Blair's case is not isolated. A statewide review by the Post and Courier found that at least 102 people with a history of mental illness have died in South Carolina jails since 2015, and that average wait times for court-ordered psychiatric treatment grew from about one month in 2019 to roughly eight months by early this year. Lawmakers authorized jail-based restoration treatment programs in 2022 but never funded most of them; only one is fully operating statewide.

Reaction

Moore, the family's attorney, said the homicide ruling was significant because in-custody deaths are more often classified as accidental, natural or undetermined. "What was most important and most critical about the autopsy report was the manner of death," Moore said, adding that South Carolina's chief investigative agency is now treating the case as a homicide. He rejected the sheriff's suggestion that the jail's age was to blame. "A building didn't do this to Gary," Moore said. "People did this. People who walked by him and knew that he was suffering did nothing."

"Bubba got the death sentence; that's how I feel. For wearing a shirt," said Vivian Cassidy, Blair's aunt.

Cassidy said the family has not received a call or visit from Streater since Blair died. "Somebody needs to pay," she said. "And it might be a lot of somebodies, because there was a lot of people that knew, had to know." Streater has declined interview requests about conditions inside Blair's cell but told a reporter last week that the matter remained under investigation and apologized to the family for what happened.

What happens next

The State Law Enforcement Division's investigation remains open, and agents have interviewed jail staff, Ellerbe and inmates who were housed near Blair, though not all employees agreed to be interviewed. Chesterfield County Coroner Kip Kiser, who under South Carolina law has sole authority to determine manner of death, has declined to answer questions about the case and referred inquiries to SLED. No criminal charges have been filed. Moore said his firm is continuing to gather accounts from former inmates about conditions in the jail as the family weighs a civil claim, while county officials separately continue to debate financing for a new detention center that supporters say would ease the crowding blamed, in part, for the jail's operational strain.