A 27-year-old East Hartford man, Jaishon Bellamy, who had been incarcerated for nearly a decade following sexual assault convictions as a teenager, has died, according to officials.
The Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) reported that Bellamy was discovered unresponsive in his cell at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution early Thursday morning, with a bed sheet around his neck.
DOC officials said a correctional officer conducting a routine tour around 2:30 a.m. noticed that Bellamy had obstructed the window of his cell door. After ordering him to remove the obstruction and receiving no response, staff entered the cell and found Bellamy with the sheet around his neck. He was the sole occupant of the cell.
Emergency measures were initiated, and Bellamy was transported to St. Francis Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:50 a.m. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the official cause of death.
Bellamy had been serving a 20-year sentence for first-degree sexual assault and had been incarcerated since 2015. He was 16 years old at the time of the crimes and was charged as an adult.
Police said he assaulted one woman in a commuter parking lot and, three weeks later, broke into a home on Collimore Road, where he sexually assaulted another woman. DNA evidence linked him to both attacks, according to published reports.
Earlier this week, Bellamy had been involved in a violent attack on a female correction officer at the Osborn Correctional Institution, according to the Office of the Inspector General.
The officer, represented by AFSCME Council 4, suffered severe injuries, including a fractured eye socket, multiple abrasions, and significant bruising. The union stated that the officer was “left to fight for her life.”
Following that assault, Bellamy was transferred to the higher-security MacDougall-Walker facility. Both the DOC and state police have launched investigations into the circumstances surrounding his death.
