Woman dies after Arlington jail incident, police say

A 73-year-old woman died Sunday after she was found unresponsive in a cell at the Arlington County jail, police said.

Abonesh Woldegeorges was found about 7 a.m. After immediate resuscitation efforts, she was taken to the hospital, where she died.

No cause of death was given. Both the cause and manner of death will be determined by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, police said.

Woldegeorges was arrested and charged with trespassing Aug. 13 by the agency that operates Reagan National Airport, according to police. Online court records of the arrest indicated that she had no fixed address.

She was being held at the county detention center while waiting to be taken to Loudoun County in connection with a charge of failing to appear. The charge was based on an alleged trespassing incident there, Arlington police said.

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No address was given for the woman.

Woldegeorges is the eighth person who died in the Arlington County Jail over the last eight years.

Hers is the first death to occur in the facility since Acting Sheriff Jose Quiroz took over the jail in January. His predecessor, Beth Arthur, had served in the role for more than two decades and drew intense scrutiny from the Arlington NAACP and criminal justice advocacy groups over that string of deaths, which included six Black men.

Quiroz, Arthur’s longtime deputy, won a contested Democratic primary for sheriff in June and faced similar criticisms from his primary opponents. He campaigned on his efforts to implement drug screening for people committed to the jail and in May piloted a program to use biometric sensors to recognize medical crises in inmates. He is the only candidate on the ballot in November.

The Arlington branch of the NAACP has complained that the county has failed to properly address the problem of obtaining appropriate treatment for inmates with medical needs. Last year, The Washington Post reported that seven men of color had died — one by suicide — in the county detention facility in the seven previous years.

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