Jail guard placed on leave after deadly inmate stabbing at Allegheny County Jail

By JUSTIN VELLUCCI
TribLive

An Allegheny County Jail guard has been placed on unpaid leave after a deadly stabbing at the Downtown lockup last week.

Officials Tuesday declined to name the correctional officer or identify their role — if any — in the May 13 stabbing last week of incarcerated person Tyrone Good, 44. They also declined to provide the officer’s gender, their station or post at the county jail, or what union represents them.

The head of one jail workers’ union did not return phone calls Tuesday. The president of the union representing sergeants at the jail declined comment.

Allegheny County Police are investigating the slaying of Good, who was attacked after multiple inmates entered his cell at 12:48 p.m. May 13.

An “internal investigation” also is taking place within the jail, public safety spokesman Jim Madalinsky said. He declined to elaborate.

After the assault, first responders rushed Good to UPMC Mercy hospital. He died there shortly before 2 p.m. that day, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The medical examiner said in a statement that Good was “stabbed by assailant(s) and transported to UPMC Mercy ER.” They listed the time of the attack as 1:42 p.m.

Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, who is a member of the Jail Oversight Board, told TribLive last week that she learned separately from two jail staff members that Good had been stabbed.

An email from Warden Trevor Wingard said the incident took place on Pod 4D, according to Hallam.

Good had been held at the jail since April 14, when he was extradited from Georgia to Pittsburgh, where he was arrested on a homicide charge, police said.

Attorney Casey White, who represented Good, said the victim’s family “is devastated by his death while in custody.”

“They are in utter shock,” White said last week. “At this stage, there are far more questions than answers.”

Good was picked up on a warrant March 28 at an Atlanta airport, police said.

He was charged with killing his girlfriend, Michelle Sturdivant, whose body was found at a home on Watson Boulevard in Perry North on Dec. 28.

Police said Sturdivant, 44, had been beaten and burned. Good was accused of attacking the woman at his West End apartment on Wabash Street before moving her body to the Perry North house.