The Bucks County Coroner’s Office on Friday evening released information on two recent deaths of county inmates.
In the most recent incident, Coroner Meredith Buck said Melissa Mager, 48, of Philadelphia, was the inmate who died at Doylestown Hospital while in county custody on Wednesday.
According to court records, Mager was in the county prison related to felony retail theft in Bristol Township. She was on probation at the time and accused of violating it for a past retail theft.
Buck said Mager’s cause of death remains under investigation by her office.
The Bucks County Detectives and Bucks County Department of Corrections continue to investigate the circumstances around the death.
Buck on Friday also released the cause of death for Octavius Davis, 35, of Bristol Township’s Croydon section, who died at the county jail in January.
Buck said Davis’ death was ruled accidental and he died a drug intoxication from prescription and illegal substances.
“Mr. Davis had two prescription drugs, 7-amino-clonazepam and mirtazapine, and two illicit drug substances, xylazine and fentanyl, in his system when he died,” said Buck. “Following national standards, we identify all drugs present on the death certificate. In this case, the level of fentanyl was 7.2 ng/mL so the drug would have contributed significantly to his death. Mr. Davis had been incarcerated for almost two weeks at the time of his death, indicating these drugs entered his system while he was in prison.”
Davis’ body had no signs of physical injuries.
“7-amino-clonazepam is a break-down product of the benzodiazepine, clonazepam, and mirtazapine is an antidepressant medication. Xylazine, a large animal sedative, is now commonly identified in drug overdose deaths in the Philadelphia area, especially when fentanyl is present. On February 28, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration announced steps to limit the entry of xylazine into the country for illicit purposes. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has been involved in approximately 70 percent of drug overdose deaths in Bucks County in recent years,” the coroner’s office said.
Davis and Mager were the county’s first two inmate deaths of 2023.
According to Pennsylvania Department of Correction’s extraordinary occurrence statistics and this news organization’s tally dating back to 2015, Bucks County has reported seven inmate suicides, one homicide, and eight medical-related or accidental deaths at the correctional facility.
