An inmate who died by suicide at the Western Tidewater Regional Jail in early July had been at the lock-up for only four days.
Now, his family is questioning whether the jail’s staff did all they could to prevent what happened.
Zackariah Alexander Pate, 29, of Portsmouth, was arrested July 1 on a public intoxication charge in Suffolk, with police officers learning that he had failed to show up for court hearings on a separate series of charges in Portsmouth.
That’s when he was jailed on a felony bail violation charge, court records show.
At about 2 p.m. on July 5, Pate was found unresponsive on a bathroom floor at the regional jail, according to jail medical documents provided to his family. He was in a “semi-seated position,” with a thin rope around his neck.
“An attending officer used trauma sheers to cut the rope from Mr. Pate’s neck,” the documents say. “He was then immediately and safely placed on his back.”
Suffolk firefighter-medics arrived at 2:17 p.m. They found Pate on a gymnasium floor, as nurses were performing CPR and other life-saving measures on him, according to a Suffolk Fire Department report into their response.
“The patient is unresponsive, has no pulse and is not breathing,” that report said. But medics were able to restore a pulse within about six minutes.
Pate had a ligature mark on his neck, and a “short thin rope” was found attached to the hinge of a nearby door frame, the Fire Department report said. The “rope” appeared to be part of the netting cut from a nearby basketball hoop.
Jail staffers told medics that Pate and three other inmates were “in the gym together, unsupervised, for about 20 minutes” before he was found unresponsive, the report said. Pate was “last seen” at 1:45 p.m. before being found in cardiac arrest at 2:05 p.m.
The family got the devastating news at about 8:30 p.m.
Pate’s stepfather, Donald Tye — who helped raise Zackariah since he was 7 years old — said the family met at Norfolk Sentara General Hospital that night and learned that Pate “would basically never leave the hospital bed.”
“We were going to take him off life support so he didn’t lay there and suffer,” said Tye, 53. But officials with LifeNet Health, an organ donation service, told the family that Pate met the criteria to become a donor.
The nonprofit organization asked for a few more days to plan a heart transplant.
The family agreed. The organ donation made local headlines a few weeks ago. The Pate case marked the nation’s third “HIV-positive-to-HIV-positive heart donation” since a new federal law went into effect 11 years ago allowing such transfers.
Pate died at Sentara on July 9. The State Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled Pate’s death a suicide caused by “complications of asphyxia by hanging.”
But Pate’s family members now contend the regional jail could have done more to prevent his death.
For one thing, Tye said, Pate had mental-health issues that warranted more monitoring. Jail records indicate that Pate expressed suicidal thoughts while in custody at the regional jail in 2022, and that he attempted a suicide at a different jail in 2023.
“They were aware of his mental background, that he needed mental help,” Tye said. “It’s in the records.“
Tye also questioned how Pate could have cut the netting from a basketball hoop 10 feet off the floor without assistance.
When Pate was checked into the regional jail July 1, he told a nurse he had depression and bipolar disorder and “needs help coping,” the jail records say. He also mentioned the 2023 suicide attempt at the Portsmouth City Jail.
But Pate stopped short of saying he was actively considering suicide.
“Are you currently thinking about killing or hurting yourself?” the check-in form asked. “If YES, place on suicide watch.”
Pate said “No” to that question, according to the document. He also said no when asked if he was feeling helpless and hopeless.
This was the Western Tidewater Regional Jail’s first suicide since 2016, according to Marissa Dickens, the jail’s director of administration and support.
The jail said in a statement that staffers did a full medical and mental health screening on Pate when he was booked July 1.
“Medical protocol was followed, and he was seen by (medical staff) several times throughout each day,” the statement said. “He made no comment(s) of being suicidal and denied any other issues during any of the assessments.”
During his stay, the statement said, “Mr. Pate was being monitored by security staff per (Western Tidewater Regional Jail) policy.” (In most jails, the standard protocol is to conduct security checks twice an hour at irregular intervals).
Pate made four phone calls during his time in custody, the statement said. Two were to his sister. The jail said the sister told Pate that she was waiting until July 8 — or a week from her brother’s assault on her — to bond him out.
The jail’s superintendent, Col. William Smith, declined to answer questions on Friday, citing the ongoing investigation.
The unanswered questions include when the last security check was conducted and who found Pate unconscious — a guard or a fellow inmate.
Moreover, jail officials would not explain where the “bathroom” was in relation to the gym, or whether the area was observable to jail guards conducting their rounds.
Tye said Pate grew up in Portsmouth, the second of four siblings. He held jobs in the kitchen at Pizza Hut and as a manager at a 7-Eleven, though he wasn’t working recently.
Pate contracted HIV about 10 years ago, Tye said. But while he had a strict diet and was in good physical health, he also struggled with alcohol — a problem that worsened after his mother’s death in 2022.
“We all took a hit from it,” Tye said of his wife’s death. “But he took it really hard.”
On June 5, Portsmouth Police charged Pate with assault and battery on his sister, punching her during a drinking binge and giving her a black eye.
The family backed the assault charge.
“If you’re gonna function in society, you have to have a set of rules,” Tye said. “You can’t get drunk and put your hands on people.”
Pate was released pending a court hearing. But on June 9, he was charged in Portsmouth with being drunk in public, giving a false ID to law enforcement and obstruction. He was also charged with indecent exposure for what Tye said was “mooning a cop” during that arrest.
Then Pate was hit with additional charges for failing to show up for June court hearings before finally being arrested July 1 in Suffolk on a second drunk-in-public count.
Pate told a jail nurse during the intake process that he had been off his HIV medication for the prior month, jail records say. His treatment was instead targeted on alcohol withdrawal — a combination of the drug Librium along with Gatorade and over-the-counter drugs.
The records say Pate turned down Librium on both July 3 and July 4, once because he “didn’t want it” and another time because he “didn’t want to get up.”
Tye disputed last week that his stepson was off his HIV meds — asserting that Pate was “absolutely” still taking them. “He took them every day like clockwork,” Tye said, saying Pate had set a reminder on his phone to take them daily at 4:30 p.m.
Moreover, Tye contended that Pate’s apparent refusal to take the alcohol withdrawal medication should have caused jail staffers to take urgent action, especially given his stepson’s mental health history.
Tye said he’s still working to get to the bottom of what happened, and eagerly awaits a report from the Suffolk Police Department into the death.
In the meantime, he said, his stepson is sorely missed.
“When he wasn’t drinking, he was wonderful,” Tye said. “The grandbabies tell me every day that they miss their Uncle Zack.”
Reporter Katrina Dix contributed to this report,
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to the organ donation service as LifeNet. The full name is LifeNet Health.
Originally Published:
