Yakima County inmate kills himself before plea

A 19-year-old prisoner in the Yakima County Jail hanged himself with his bedsheet the night before he was to plead guilty to an arson charge.

William Murray was found Thursday night - the third suicide at the jail in the past year, the Yakima Herald-Republic reported.

Murray was arrested in March for trying to commit suicide by setting fire to his apartment. Firefighters found him tied to a chair in the burning unit; he initially said gang members had tied him up and left him to die, but later confessed to setting the fire himself.

He was scheduled to enter a guilty plea Friday to a reduced charge of second-degree arson and was looking at 21 months in prison.

Despite the circumstances of the arrest, Murray had not appeared suicidal, said county Corrections Director Steve Robertson.

"He had been here for months, and there was absolutely nothing to indicate he was contemplating this act," Robertson said.

The suicide was the second major incident at the jail last week. On Tuesday a 30-year-old inmate was stabbed several times in the upper body. He was expected to survive.

The other two suicides came in April, when a 28-year-old inmate jumped from a cell block railing, and in November, when a 43-year-old Yakima woman hanged herself in her cell.

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Information from: Yakima Herald-Republic, http://www.yakima-herald.com