A prisoner who repeatedly denied feeling suicidal has taken his own life in a North East prison, a report into his death has found.
Justin McLelland was found hanged in his cell at HMP Northumberland on October 15, 2021, when the UK was under lockdown restrictions. And despite efforts to bring McLelland to safety, paramedics arrived at the prison and pronounced that he had died.
McLelland had spent six months at Northumberland before he took his life. An independent investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) looking into the circumstances surrounding his death states that he was the fourth prisoner to die from suicide at HMP Northumberland since October 2019 but there were no similarities between the findings in this report and those of the previous deaths.
