Tarrant County residents and community members are again protesting over this year's jail deaths amid the latest death.
Nearly 100 people gathered across the Tarrant County Jail Tuesday morning before the county commissioners court meeting as Saturday marked the sixth jail death this year.
That included family members of those who have died while in custody, including Victoria Rogers, the niece of Victor Runnels.
Runnels died June 26 after a medical emergency, his family told reporters June 30.
Rogers said her family wasn't notified until hours later that Runnels had been transported to a nearby hospital after suffering a medical emergency.
"He was a son, a brother, an uncle, and he was deeply loved," Rogers said. "To the Tarrant County Jail, he just became another number."
Court records show Runnels was also released from jail custody less than 30 minutes after he was pronounced dead.
His death will not be investigated, as it doesn't match the criteria of an in-custody death, the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office previously said.
Rogers said Runnels was on life support shackled to the hospital bed when she and other family members arrived to see him.
"He died like a slave shackled to a hospital bed," Rogers said. "We will probably never know what happened to him because his death will not be investigated."
Jackie Johnson also spoke at Tuesday's rally, the mother of Anthony Johnson, Jr. who died at the jail on April 2024.
Johnson died after one jailer pepper sprayed him in the mouth and another kneeled on his back for more than a minute despite telling jailers he couldn't breathe, according to partially released footage from that day.
"He deserved medical care, protection, a chance to come home, and a system that failed him at every step," Jackie Johnson said. "Instead, he was murdered on the floor of a government facility while people I stood around and watched."
Those two jailers were indicted for murder in June 2024. A trial still hasn't been set. At the same time, Tarrant County is fighting to stay off a civil lawsuit from the Johnsons, who allege the county and jailers failed to give their son proper medical and mental care.
More than 80 people have died since 2017 at the county jail, the same year Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office.
Gemma Leigh Swingle, 36, died Saturday at the county jail after she was found unresponsive in her cell during a routine check by jailers, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office and a press release from the county sheriff's office.
Four men died within 11 days while in custody in June and another man died in April. All six causes and manners of death were pending as of Tuesday.
Waybourn emphasized during March's meeting jail death numbers have decreased over the years since 2020 — there were six deaths last year and nine the year before.
But with six jail deaths this year, backlash over how the sheriff's office runs the jail has only increased, leaving several residents questioning whether current efforts, if any, are helping keep inmates safe.
Penelope Rivera is KERA's Tarrant County Accountability Reporter. Email Penelope at privera@kera.org.
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