Another person died in the Arlington County detention center over the weekend, marking the eighth death in the jail in 8 years. Deaths in the jail have exclusively affected people of color, mostly middle-aged Black men.

Sheriff’s deputies found Abonesh Woldegeorges, 73, unresponsive in her cell on Sunday morning at 7:02 a.m. and attempted to resuscitate her, according to a press release from Arlington police. Eight minutes later, Arlington EMTs arrived and transported her to Virginia Hospital Center, where she was pronounced dead.

“Our condolences go out to her family and loved ones during this difficult time,” the police news release added.

In a statement, Arlington acting sheriff Jose Quiroz also offered condolences to Woldegeorges’ loved ones. “I want to assure the community that caring for those individuals in our custody is a number one priority for me,” he said.

Arlington police are investigating Woldegeorges’ death, the first on Quiroz’s watch after he replaced outgoing sheriff Beth Arthur at the beginning of the year. The county’s Chief Medical Examiner has not yet determined the cause of her death. Quiroz said the sheriff’s office would cooperate with the police investigation.

Woldegeorges had been held in the jail since mid-August after being arrested for trespassing by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the body that oversees National Airport in Arlington. Arlington sheriff’s deputies were planning to transport her to Loudoun County, where she was facing a charge after failing to appear in another trespassing case, for which she was arrested in May.

The 73-year-old’s death is the latest in a disturbing series of deaths of people in custody in the Arlington jail, where eight people have died since 2015. Previous deaths prompted the jail to sever its contract with its longtime healthcare provider, Corizon Health, and enter its current contract with MEDIKO, another medical provider. The county sheriff and Corizon Health reached a $1.3 million settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by one deceased man’s family after he died in the jail due to complications from opiate withdrawal exacerbated by negligence on the part of sheriff’s deputies and jail healthcare staff.

Last year, the Arlington branch of the NAACP called for a federal civil rights investigation into the jail. The group spoke out again following the news of Waldegeorges’ death.

“It’s unimaginable that a 73-year-old woman being held on trespassing charges would ultimately lose her life while in custody. Unfortunately, we have seen a pattern and practice of blatant disregard for basic care at the Arlington County jail and it is leading to deaths at an alarming rate,” said Michael Hemminger, the group’s president, in a news release.

Hemminger said county leadership and the sheriff’s office have “failed to properly address the root problem” behind the in-custody deaths. The NAACP also noted that the deaths in the jail disproportionately affect people of color, particularly Black people, because Black people are policed and arrested at vastly higher rates in the county. Arlington’s population is 9% Black, but the jail population is often close to two-thirds Black.

Others who have died in custody in Arlington were also being held on trespassing charges. Court records show that Waldegeorges had been arrested multiple times since 2020 for trespassing, mostly in Loudoun County. In Arlington, that charge is often used against people who are unhoused or in mental health crisis or both, according to the county’s Chief Public Defender, Brad Haywood.

“I can’t remember a trespassing client of our office who didn’t have a behavioral health disorder or who wasn’t homeless,” he said. “It’s always one or the other.”

“It’s policing people who don’t have other places to go or who are confused about where they are,” he said. “It’s criminalizing social conditions in our county.”

Haywood and other advocates see a straight line between a lack of mental health services in Northern Virginia and the fact that the Arlington jail is often filled with people in crisis. In fiscal year 2023, sheriff’s office figures show that more than 1,500 people incarcerated in the jail received medication for mental health conditions, more than half of the nearly 2,800 total people admitted to the jail that year.

“You are essentially shifting our community social problems from the agencies that ought to be taking care of it to the jail,” Haywood said. “The jail’s not equipped to be a psychiatric hospital.”

Haywood said he’d warned county board members about recent conditions in the jail. He said some of his office’s clients had said they were experiencing lockdowns — 23 hours alone in a cell, with just one hour outside of it — more frequently, perhaps due to staffing problems.

In June, Quiroz, the acting sheriff, won the Democratic nomination to run for sheriff in the November general election. His platform centered on improving conditions and programming for people held in the jail, including a biometric sensor program intended to monitor people in withdrawal for medical complications.

This story has been updated with a statement from the Arlington Sheriff.