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An 18-year-old woman was found dead in her jail cell last week

Matthew Speiser   

An 18-year-old woman was found dead in her jail cell last week

Kindra Chapman Photo

AL.com/Carol Robinson

Kindra Darnell Chapman

The day after Sandra Bland was found hanging in a Texas jail cell, another black woman died in an eerily similar manner.

Roughly an hour and a half after Kindra Darnell Chapman, 18, was booked into a jail cell in Homewood, Alabama on July 14 on a charge of first-degree robbery, police say they found her "unresponsive," according to AL.com.

She was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Police believe she used a bed sheet to hang herself.

Chapman's alleged suicide has been met with skepticism, just as Bland's purported suicide has.

In an email to AL.com, Chapman's mother Kathy Brady said she was not notified of her daughter's death until after 9 p.m., over an hour after police found Chapman hanging in her cell.

A petition on the website Change.org arranged by a Birmingham, Alabama religious group has also come to the defense of Chapman.

"We call for full disclosure and a full accounting of all of the interactions between Kindra Darnell Chapman and the Homewood Police Department," the petition reads. "We are calling for a meeting with any and all investigating officers so that we ourselves can relate that information of the Homewood Police Department to our communities."

"This issue is brought up because of the scant information that has been released on such a serious matter through the media. We feel there are consistent and persistent patterns of police mistreatment in the state of Alabama that are not always addressed particularly as it pertains to black women."

On Tuesday, a "Black Lives Matter" protest was held in front of the Homewood jailhouse where Chapman died, according to AL.com.

A local prosecutor told AL.com that his office is reviewing the case.

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