Vermont State Police have identified Shawn Gardner, 37, of Newport, as the man who died Wednesday at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
He is the ninth person in Vermont to die while incarcerated this year. Foul play is not suspected in most of the deaths, authorities have said, except one in which an incarcerated person was allegedly beaten by another man in custody late last year and died earlier this year.
In a press release late Wednesday night, Vermont State Police said an incarcerated man, whom they later identified as Gardner, “became unresponsive in the shower area” at the St. Albans prison at about 6:35 p.m.
“Corrections staff provided emergency medical care and called first responders to the prison,” police wrote. “Lifesaving efforts were unsuccessful, and the inmate was pronounced dead at Northwest State at 7:22 p.m. Wednesday.”
In an update on Thursday, police said that the result of an initial investigation and examination of the scene found that Gardner was “in possession of an unknown substance” prior to becoming unresponsive.
Toxicology testing, which can take several months, will occur as part of his autopsy by the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington, according to Thursday’s press release.
Police on Thursday added that Garnder was federally incarcerated and housed in a segregated unit at the St. Albans prison.
Gardner was initially detained Tuesday at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport before he was transferred to the St. Albans prison prior to a federal court hearing Wednesday, police said.
He returned to the St. Albans prison after the hearing, according to the release, and shortly after that collapsed in the shower and was later pronounced dead.
Per protocol, Vermont State Police and the Vermont Public Defender’s Office were contacted and will be conducting separate reviews, according to the state Department of Corrections. The corrections department will also be conducting administrative and medical reviews.
Gardner was sentenced to 32 months in prison on a conviction of conspiracy to distribute heroin in 2018, followed by three years of supervised release, according to court records. He was in court Wednesday for allegedly violating the terms of supervised release and was ordered detained while the matter remained pending, court records stated.
In 2022, a total of nine people died in corrections custody. From 2017 through 2021, a total of 15 people, for an average of three per year, died in Vermont’s prisons, according to the corrections department.
