Jason Sanford Died Hours After Clayton Jail Cleared Him

Jason Shad Sanford, 41, was pronounced dead at 7:18 p.m. on April 5, 2024, at Southern Regional Hospital after a medical emergency in booking at the Clayton County Jail. Clayton County Police had brought him in at about 12:25 p.m. on a charge of giving a false name, and jail medical staff cleared him to enter.

Sheriff Levon Allen’s office said staff gave him Narcan and CPR after he became unresponsive. The medical examiner’s file and his family described a longer afternoon than that alert named, and the jail’s later death record did not treat the day as a one-off.

Seven Hours From Booking to Southern Regional

The sheriff’s April 5 nighttime advisory, posted at 11:16 p.m. from the office at 9157 Tara Blvd. in Jonesboro, said Sanford passed an initial medical exam, then at 1:12 p.m. complained of back and wrist pain. That second visit came 47 minutes after he walked in. He was put in an intake holding cell “to finish the remainder of the booking process,” the alert said, then had a medical emergency, became unresponsive, and was given Narcan and CPR before Clayton County Emergency Services took him to Southern Regional, where he died.

The span from 12:25 p.m. to 7:18 p.m. is 6 hours and 53 minutes. He never finished booking. He never left on the bond his mother had already paid.

THE APRIL 5 CLOCK

1. 12:25 p.m.: Clayton County Police bring Jason Sanford to the jail on a charge of giving a false name. Medical staff assess him and clear him to enter.
2. 1:12 p.m.: Medical staff see him again for back and wrist pain. He is placed in an intake holding cell.
3. About 5 p.m.: His older brother, Larry Ingram, last speaks with him by phone. Their mother, Annette Sanford, has already paid the bond.
4. 6:10 p.m.: He is placed alone in an isolation room that can be watched on a video monitor, according to the medical examiner’s file.
5. 6:20 p.m.: After being seen twitching, he stops moving.
6. 6:35 p.m.: Medical staff and a corrections officer enter with an AED, 15 minutes later, and try to resuscitate him. Narcan is given twice. He becomes responsive, then unresponsive, after each dose.
7. 6:45 p.m.: EMS arrives, 25 minutes after he stopped moving, and takes him to Southern Regional Hospital.
8. 7:18 p.m.: He is pronounced dead. The Clayton County Medical Examiner, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the sheriff’s CID and Internal Affairs units are notified.

Allen’s public note called the event “a medical emergency.” It did not mention the isolation room, the 15-minute gap, the two Narcan doses, or the paid bond.

Staff Waited 15 Minutes After He Stopped Moving

The medical examiner’s file, later reviewed with the family, is the record of those missing minutes. Sanford was observed twitching in the isolation room, then still at 6:20 p.m. Staff did not come in with an AED until 6:35 p.m. EMS was not there until 6:45 p.m.

Ingram said he had been on the phone with his brother almost the entire time Jason was at the jail, after moving to Florida four years earlier. Their last call was about 5 p.m., when Ingram told him their mother had already paid the bond on the false-name charge. Sanford still was not released. About an hour later he was alone in the monitored room.

Annette Sanford told interviewers her son had previously seriously injured both his back and his wrist, the same places he named at 1:12 p.m. Those complaints are not the classic picture of an opioid overdose, which is slowed or stopped breathing. They are the complaints a man with old injuries would make in handcuffs and a holding cell.

When Ingram went to pick up his brother’s belongings, he said the jail gave him someone else’s clothes.

What Narcan Was Doing in the Isolation Room

Narcan is the brand name for naloxone. The sheriff’s advisory said it “was administered.” The medical examiner’s file says it was given twice, and that Sanford came around and then slipped away after each dose.

Federal health guidance is narrow about what the drug does. The CDC says naloxone reverses opioid overdoses and can restore normal breathing within 2 to 3 minutes. It also says naloxone can cause withdrawal in people dependent on opioids, with fever, anxiety, a rapid heart rate, sweating, nausea, vomiting, and tremors. The same guidance says the drug will not harm someone who is not overdosing on an opioid, which is why many jails keep it on the cart for any collapse.

WHAT NALOXONE IS FOR

• The target: Opioid overdose, including heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioid pills, when breathing has slowed or stopped.
• The timing: One dose, then 2 to 3 minutes to see if breathing returns before a second dose.
• The catch in jail use: It is a poor fit for withdrawal, and it does not treat back pain, wrist pain, or a seizure.

Clayton County Jail staff reached for it on Sanford after back and wrist pain. They reached for it again that spring on DeWayne Driscoll, 48, who was found unresponsive in a cell on March 26, 2024, after telling medical two days earlier that he had back pain, hypertension, and trouble breathing. The medical examiner’s director asked the sheriff why Narcan was given. The sheriff’s reply, recorded in the file, was that Driscoll “may have been going through withdrawal,” with a question mark. Driscoll’s jail file listed alcohol abuse, hypertension, hypothyroidism, and sleep apnea. His daughter said he did not use drugs. His widow, Addie, said the hospital called her, not the jail, and that Allen later told her there was no video in that cell, even though the examiner’s report describes video of Driscoll moving at about 6:39 a.m.

After Sanford died, Annette Sanford said the jail chaplain who called her kept asking if her son was a “drug addict.” The question followed the drug they had already given him.

Annette Sanford Had Already Paid His Bond

The charge that put Sanford in that intake cell was giving a false name, not a violent felony. His mother had already paid to get him out before staff moved him into isolation. Ingram wanted someone held to account for a death that began with a booking he was still on the phone for.

Other families deserve to have the answers. They don’t feel like they have to answer to anyone. And I want them to have to answer to somebody.

Annette Sanford, Jason Sanford’s mother

“Now I sit at home and I ain’t got nobody to talk to,” Ingram said. “I want answers. I want somebody to be responsible for this because it is somebody’s responsibility.” Annette put it in one line: “We deserve to have answers.”

Those answers did not arrive with the 11:16 p.m. note. A cause of death was not in the sheriff’s advisory, and later public files on Sanford still do not publish one. The gap is the point of the pattern, not a side note. Clayton County Jail was already a death-count story in Jonesboro before Sanford arrived, and it stayed one after he left in an ambulance.

Deaths at the Jail Doubled to Eight in 2024

Four people died in custody at the jail in 2023. Eight died in 2024, double the year before, in a count drawn from news reports and county documents. By May 15, 2024, five weeks after Sanford’s death, the 2024 total was already at least six, past the prior year’s whole count. Allen, asked about the rise, said, “Some of them were medical issues. Some of them were just tempers and moments of anger, ultimately changing people’s lives forever.”

Sanford’s afternoon sits on that roster next to people held on similarly small entries, and next to people the medical examiner later tied to neglect.

SELECTED DEATHS IN THE SAME JAIL

Willison had written “NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL” and “I HAVE MAJOR PAIN AND SOMETHING WRONG WITH PRIVATE PARTS.” A urologist diagnosed testicular cancer in January 2023 and said he needed emergency surgery. A lawsuit filed by his mother says no one at the jail returned the doctor’s calls. He died on January 26, 2023. Medical examiner director Brian Byars listed medical neglect, unhygienic living conditions, malnourishment, and sequelae of physical abuse as contributing conditions. Allen later said the briefing he got was that Willison “came in, he was at the final stages of the cancer,” then added, “Now, if that’s true or not, I don’t know.”

Eric Lee died in February 2024, two weeks after an airport shop’s loss-prevention officer pressed charges over a $3.29 coffee when Lee had 25 cents. He was held on a $1,500 shoplifting bond. Officials did not release a cause of death. Martinez, one of the last men to die while CorrectHealth still held the medical contract, had written that he felt weak, had not eaten in days, and was having suicidal thoughts. Staff cleared him back to housing after he passed out and hit his head. He fell again and was pronounced dead. Allen said he did not follow up on that autopsy: “But ultimately, he was in our medical care, and he fell down.”

On September 7, 2023, seven months before Sanford’s booking, Sen. Jon Ossoff asked the Justice Department to investigate the jail under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. “But more incarcerated individuals at Clayton County Jail will likely die without federal intervention,” he wrote. In a public statement on the same request he said there appeared to be “a pattern and practice of civil rights violations in this jail that result in preventable deaths.” As of December 2024, the Justice Department had not announced an inquiry. At least eight people had died at the jail in the months after the letter by late May 2024, Sanford among them.

CorrectHealth’s Contract Ran Past $1.2 Million a Month

Jail medical care on the day Sanford died was run by CorrectHealth, a Georgia for-profit contractor. The sheriff’s office paid the company more than $1.2 million a month under the renewal on file. CorrectHealth’s chief legal officer, asked about Driscoll, declined to discuss his care and sent condolences. In the Willison civil case the company said it lacked information to admit or deny many of the claims.

In October 2024 Allen replaced CorrectHealth with FirstClass Healthcare on a nine-month contract worth almost $15 million, with more due if the detainee count rose above 1,800. He told an interviewer he wanted staff to treat detainees as they would their own loved ones, “Disney World and Chick-fil-A customer service, and I don’t play about it.”

The building those clinicians worked in was already over its beds. Allen said in February 2024 the jail holds 1,535 people “comfortably with one inmate to a bed” and was then at about 1,900, with 400 to 500 sleeping on the floor. In January 2024, when Pettigrew was killed, the sheriff’s office said a two-person cell held three men because overcrowding had left more than 300 people on the floor. By December 2024 Allen still put the overcrowding at about 500 people, some on the floor, some in triples. He said he had used his authority to release “well over 1,000” people held on low-level charges and had told police chiefs to write tickets when they could. Local officers still booked people for traffic and other minor offenses, the same class of entry that put Sanford in intake on a false-name charge.

The jail’s recent political history is part of the same file. Former Sheriff Victor Hill was convicted of violating detainees’ civil rights in 2022 after he ordered staff to strap six pretrial detainees, including a teenager, into restraint chairs for hours. Allen, Hill’s godson, became interim sheriff later in 2022 and won a special election in 2023. The two later split in public. In May 2024, weeks after Sanford died, the medical examiner’s office was in court seeking a mandamus order because the sheriff’s office had not turned over medical records, booking forms, inmate messages, and death reports on at least eight custody deaths. Families were waiting on causes while the agencies named in Sanford’s own alert were fighting over paper.

Homicide by Neglect, Ruled in September 2026

Scott Clyde Worthy, 57, of Jonesboro, was taken from the same jail to Grady Memorial Hospital on August 30, 2025. He told paramedics he had been unable to get up, get food, or use the bathroom for about four days. Cellmates, he said, stole his food before he could reach it. The responding paramedic described clothes soaked in urine and feces and said Worthy appeared not to have been cleaned or changed for several days. A jail officer told the crew that daily checks had not been done properly. Jail medical staff said they had never seen Worthy before and did not know how long he had been in that state. Doctors found blistering, skin coming off, and areas of dead tissue. He died at Grady on September 6, 2025, of complications of Streptococcus pyogenes sepsis.

The GBI medical examiner first called the manner of death undetermined and noted that living conditions could have fed the infection and that medical neglect could not be ruled out. After more interviews, the Clayton County Medical Examiner’s Office, still under Brian Byars, found that failures to see and answer Worthy’s decline “materially contributed” to the fatal infection. On September 10, 2026, the office classified the death as a homicide caused by medical neglect and uninhabitable living conditions. The office also said a homicide finding is forensic. It does not, by itself, prove a crime.

That ruling does not assign a cause to Sanford. It does show what the same examiner’s office was willing to write when the file was complete, in the same jail, after the same kind of delayed medical response that families described in 2024.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The charge and the clock: Sanford was booked at about 12:25 p.m. on April 5, 2024, for giving a false name and was dead at 7:18 p.m. the same day, 6 hours and 53 minutes later.
• The medical steps: He was cleared, seen again at 1:12 p.m. for back and wrist pain, isolated at 6:10 p.m., still at 6:20 p.m., and given Narcan twice after a 15-minute delay.
• The agencies named: The Clayton County Medical Examiner, the GBI, and the sheriff’s CID and Internal Affairs units were notified that night.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Cause of death: No public autopsy result, toxicology finding, or manner-of-death ruling for Sanford has been released.
• The probes: No public GBI, CID, or Internal Affairs finding on his death has been issued, even as later jail deaths received detailed examiner reports.
• The bond window: Why he was not released after the bond was paid remains unanswered in the sheriff’s account.

Ingram is still waiting on the responsibility he asked for on a false-name booking that ended at Southern Regional. Sanford’s cause of death has not been released.