The suspect accused of stealing a concrete truck on Monday hanged himself in the Columbia County Jail on Friday night, authorities said.
Erik Bodie, 41, took the string from a laundry bag and hanged himself from the top bunk, sheriff’s Maj. Steve Morris said. He was found by a deputy in a single cell during 30-minute rounds.
Bodie has been in jail since Monday when he hopped in a concrete truck when the driver left his keys in the vehicle at a gas station. He led officers on a wild chase on Interstate 20 that ended when Georgia State Patrol fired rounds into the vehicle’s radiator and hydraulic tanks and brought the truck to a halt, authorities said.
In a message on Facebook after his arrest, a woman said Bodie had lost his sister to suicide last year and his life went downhill from there.
Maj. Morris said Bodie was in the A-pod, an area where new inmates are kept for several days to clear them of COVID or other sicknesses before they go into general population. He had not made any suicidal statements or threats of harm to himself, Maj. Morris said.
But Bodie made a scene when he first arrived at the jail, forcing an officer to stand behind him in his initial mugshot. A second mugshot was taken after he calmed down.
Inmates are given two sets of clothes and told to put dirty laundry in the bag to be shipped out for washing. That is the bag Bodie apparently took the string from to hang himself, Maj. Morris said. He was pronounced dead at 11 p.m. Friday.
“No foul play is suspected,” Maj. Morris said.
The death comes less than a month after 32-year-old Brandon Joiner was found deceased in his holding cell after his arrest for stealing cans of compressed computer air from the Evans Walmart.
On Feb. 10, he was transported to jail and placed in a holding cell. Less than three hours later, before his booking photo had been taken, Joiner was found and life-saving efforts failed. An autopsy is pending.
On Christmas Eve 2020, inmate John Scott Sharkey was found in a single occupant cell at the same jail with a bed sheet around his neck. The sheet was affixed to the upper bunk and he was on the lower bunk area when found dead around 5:15 a.m.
In that case, logs show he was checked by staff when security rounds were made at 4:47 a.m., and he was fine at the time. Sharkey had been at the jail for three weeks.
Greg Rickabaugh is the Jail Report contributor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at greg.rickabaugh@theaugustapress.com
