AUBURN – State officials are investigating the death of a Lewiston man found inside a holding cell early Monday morning at the Androscoggin County Jail.
Police said Ahmed Hussein Samater, 46, was found unconscious and struggling to breathe just after midnight, roughly six hours after he was jailed on a charge of disorderly conduct.
A jail supervisor called for an ambulance, and paramedics attempted to revive Samater through CPR, according to Jail Administrator John Lebel. Samater later was pronounced dead at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.
Maine State Police as well as the Department of Corrections sent investigators to the jail to look into the death. Samater’s body was sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.
“It did not determine the cause of death,” said Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland. “Investigators will now await results of toxicology.”
Lewiston police took Samater to the jail at about 6 p.m. Sunday after arresting him on a charge of disorderly conduct at 196 Park St., where police believe he had been living.
McCausland said Samater was described as very drunk when he was brought to the jail, booked and placed in a holding cell.
McCausland said State Police were called in as a matter of protocol after a recent order from the Attorney General’s Office stating that all jail deaths be investigated by the state. Lebel said Department of Corrections officials were at the jail Wednesday reviewing footage from surveillance cameras.
For Samater, the county jail had become a familiar place. Since 2004, he had been arrested dozens of times, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and violating conditions of probation or bail.
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