Family files lawsuit after teen’s suicide in Harrison County Jail

The family of the young girl who committed suicide at the Harrison County Adult Detention Center has announced that they are forming a lawsuit against the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office and jail medical center for personal injuries and wrongful death.

On January 11th, 16-year-old Kayelyn Gwen Drake was booked into Harrison County Adult Detention Center for armed robbery. The next day, she was found dead in her cell after hanging herself. Now, the family is speaking out – saying their child was wrongfully accused and would still be alive today if it wasn’t for the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department.

“Kayelyn was a beautiful person,” Viola Carter described her daughter Kayelyn. “On the inside and the out. I always told her if you walked into the building… if you walked into a room, she would just light the room up.”

Before her arrest, she had never really been in any trouble Kayelyn’s mother tells us. She was a good student who enjoyed singing and photography. Her mother, Viola, tells us Kayelyn was a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

“Actually, none of them knew what that he was going to do that,” she said. “That was an impulse that he took upon himself and the other children got involved because they were there.”

That night, Kayelyn was with three other people. One of them asked the driver to pull over when he saw someone he knew. 

“She was wrongly accused and implicated just because she was with a group of kids where one of them had a dispute with someone else, and those two got into an altercation and she was not resolved,” explained Michael W. Crosby, the attorney on this case. “Being a 16-year-old hanging out with friends, she was there. But just because you’re there doesn’t mean you are guilty of anything.”

All four juveniles were arrested the next day. 

“They pulled her out of school and interviewed her without the benefit of having either a parent or an attorney with her, and they quite literally made her think that her life as she knew it was over,” Crosby said.

Kayelyn was booked into the adult detention center with a $50,000 bail. Her mother told her goodnight, unknowing that it would be the last time she would talk to her daughter. 

Kayelyn was found dead the next morning.

“It’s negligence,” Viola said. “There’s people that need to be held responsible for that.”

According to Crosby, Kayelyn had made it very clear to officers that she was planning to harm herself. 

“She was made to believe that her life was over,” he said. “That she was unable to get out and scared half to death. Unable to talk to her family and her mother… and it was more than she could bear.”

The family was told by a police officer who simply said, “Your daughter hung herself.” and left. They then waited two weeks to receive the body. 

“The sheriff even worded it like that. He said, ‘These things happen.’ These things don’t happen,” said Renee Burkes, Kayelyn’s aunt. “That’s just inconsiderate to say it like that anyway.”

We reached out to the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office for a comment, but they did not respond.