By Tim Clifford

Investigators are looking into the death of 27-year-old Brandon Burris while he was an inmate at the Kent Regional Justice Center on May 1. Staff at the RJC found Burris dead in his solitary confinement cell shortly after 7 p.m.

Little information is being offered at this time by investigators since the case is currently open. An official determination on the cause of death is pending a toxicology report with the Medical Examiner’s Office, which is expected to take up to eight weeks. One possible cause that seems to be ruled out at this point by King County officials is homicide.

“The idea behind saying it was an isolation cell and having it out there like that was to take out any questions like “could anybody have done this?”. The reason behind that was just to reassure anybody that it wasn’t as the result of somebody or the actions of someone else,” explained Cpt. Troy Bacon with King County of the verbiage used in their press release.

Burris was in custody at the time for charges of Violation of the Controlled Substances Act and Mail Theft. Since 2008 Burris had been booked six times in King County, no word on arrests in other cities or counties.
Investigators declined to comment on why Burris was in solitary confinement at the time or if his death was the result of a medical condition.

Strangely, a second man died while in the King County Jail in Seattle on May 5, a day after the press release for Burris’s death was sent out. The 31-year-old man in that case died after being taken to Harbor View Medical Center for treatment.