DA: Police Not Culpable in Inmate's Death

The Orange County district attorney's office on Tuesday announced that it found no criminal culpability on the part of Newport Beach police in the July death of a city jail inmate who hanged himself in his cell.

The district attorney's office found that there was no wrongdoing because Newport Beach City Jail guards conducted hourly welfare checks on William Robert Wedgeworth and they did not know that he was a threat to himself.

Wedgeworth, 43, was arrested on suspicion of spousal abuse July 31 and taken to the jail, according to district attorney's office report. Hours later, he was found dead, having used a bed sheet to hang himself from the bars of his cell, the report said.

Police had been called to the Wedgeworth home on several occasions, the report said. He had trouble holding down a job over the past seven years and had become depressed after the death of his father about four years ago, the DA's office said.

On the day of his arrest, according to the DA's office, Wedgeworth's wife called police. She told responding officers that her husband had charged at her, grabbed her and had thrown her onto a couch, the report said. She also said Wedgeworth grabbed her hand, forced it into a fist and began hitting himself in the face with it, saying, "You got to protect your children," according to the report. 

Wedgeworth called his family from jail and asked to be bailed out. His wife said she couldn't afford it and he told her that he planned to kill himself, the report said. She did not tell police, however, because he'd made the same threat on other occasions, the DA's office found.

An autopsy showed Wedgeworth had methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death.

— City News Service contributed to this report