A year after death of a Mississippi man in police custody, Insider ramps up its probe into 1 county's practices

• Damien Cameron died in the custody of a Mississippi sheriff's department last July.
• Five men died over eight months after interactions with the Rankin County Sheriff's Department.

Damien Cameron, a Black man, died last July after Mississippi sheriff's deputies tased him twice and knelt on his back for more than 15 minutes, according to his mother, Monica Lee.

Now, nearly one year after Cameron's death, Insider is suing the Rankin County Sheriff's Department for incident reports related to his death and that of two others involving the sheriff's department.

Over the course of eight months in 2021, Robert Rushton and Trevor McKinley were shot to death during confrontations with Rankin County sheriff's deputies, while Cameron, Cory Jackson, and Adam Coker died in RCSD custody.

The sheriff's department provided Insider with records related to the jailhouse death of Jackson after the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation closed its investigation into his case in May. It also provided records related to the death of Coker, who died in the same Rankin County Jail in September, though that investigation, as well as MBI probes into the deaths of Cameron, McKinley and Rushton, remain open.

In total, Insider requested records, including incident reports, related to all five deaths. The agency has so far only provided incident reports related to two of them.

While the department has released heavily redacted dispatch logs related to all five incidents, it has refused to release the outstanding reports, saying the cases are being investigated by the MBI and that no charges related to any of the incidents have been filed.

Mississippi public record law stipulates that "an incident report shall be a public record."

A string of deaths

Cameron died in the custody of the sheriff's department on July 26, 2021, after his family said police were called to their home over a false burglary report. After his death, MBI wrote a report that conflicted with the sheriff's department's initial press release. The report said Cameron "collapsed" while running away from deputies.

The sheriff's department did not respond to Insider's request for comment about the discrepancy at the time.

"It's crazy to me because I think the whole thing is trying to cover it up," Lee said. "But the way he sustained injuries, that can't be covered up, because you can't do that by tripping and falling."

Two months before Cameron's death, Jackson died in jail after Rankin County sheriff's deputies arrested him in Florence, Mississippi, on what his family said were trumped-up disorderly conduct charges.

He was hallucinating and screaming that he saw snakes while stabbing the floorboard of the car he was in with a letter opener, his sister Megan Jackson told Insider. He jumped out of the car just as a Rankin County sheriff's deputy was driving by, she said.

"I jumped out and started screaming, 'Please don't hurt him. He's hallucinating. He needs medical assistance,'" she said.

Responding deputies reported that when Pafford EMS, a private ambulance company, arrived on the scene, the medical staff insisted Jackson was "too violent for them to do anything," according to records obtained by Insider.

Rather than transport Jackson to a hospital, the deputies took him to jail. Security camera footage from inside shows Jackson thrashing in a restraint chair for over an hour before becoming unresponsive.

The sheriff's department did not respond to Insider's requests for comment about the footage.

In August 2021, just weeks after Cameron's death, deputies shot and killed Trevor McKinley inside his grandparents' home. In a press release, the sheriff's department said deputies were responding to a "medical call," but before arriving on the scene, the caller indicated there was a "domestic disturbance."

A press release said McKinley hid in the home's attic and shot at deputies as he exited, forcing them to return fire. But McKinley's grandmother Charlene Quarles told Insider she believed her grandson hid because he was afraid the deputies would beat him and that the department was "famous for roughing people up when they go to get 'em."

Coker, who was arrested after selling methamphetamine to a sheriff's department informant, according to an incident report, died in the Rankin County Jail the following month. Footage reviewed by Insider shows him pacing around a jail cell for hours and vomiting several times before becoming unresponsive.

Robert Rushton did not even make it to a jail cell.

In December 2021, Rankin County deputies shot Rushton after responding to a call of a drug overdose, the sheriff's department said in a statement at the time. Deputies found Rushton in his truck and shot him when he exited his vehicle approaching the deputies holding two knives, the statement said.

A 'reputation' for 'killing people'

Answers as to why the incidents resulted in deaths have remained elusive, not only for Insider but also for family members of the deceased.

Trevor McKinley's mother, Jackie McKinley, said she reached out to Sheriff Bryan Bailey after her son's death to talk to him about better training for his deputies.

Rankin County has gotten "a bit of a reputation of killing people lately," she said, and "it's really becoming an issue."

"I'm not saying that my son was an angel by any means," she told Insider. "But it could have been avoided."