COTTON CO., Okla_ Accused killer David
Daniel was found dead in his cell early Thursday morning, apparently after committing
suicide overnight in the Cotton County Jail.
He is accused
of first degree murder in the January death of Teresa Speir. He was scheduled
to appear in court next Tuesday for a preliminary hearing in that case. The Oklahoma
State Bureau of Investigation said a jail trusty discovered Daniel's body when
he was delivering breakfast to Daniel's cell around 4:30 AM.
Investigators
said it appears that Daniel used his underwear to hang himself. They said he
tied it to the door of his cell. In fact, when officers were trying to open the
door, they had to cut through that underwear just to get into his cell. He was
declared dead at the scene.
There are
cameras monitoring the cells, but investigators believe Daniel may have done
the act in an area of the cell that the camera would not record.
OSBI Agent Richard
Goss said, "He was in a cell by his self isolated with no contact from any
other inmates at all. That pretty much narrows it down. Then, we've got the
jail footage of what's going on in the cell when that occurred. There's no
indication of anything other than he committed suicide."
The reasons for
Daniel's suicide are not yet clear. Goss said his department spoke with other
inmates to get some insight into Daniel's state of mind before the suicide.
"We just
finished speaking to a trusty, and he said that he had spoken to Daniel last
evening and that he seemed to be fine and in good spirits."
Goss said Daniel
had undergone a court-ordered mental evaluation a few months ago and was
declared mentally sound.
"Obviously
from a law enforcement angle, you never know what goes through a person's mind.
Some people can interpret that as evidence of guilt. Some people can interpret
that as he didn't want to face any consequences. Who knows what was going
through his mind."
Goss said
footage from the surveillance camera shows that Daniel was writing on a pad
before he took his own life. He said the pad could hold the words that tell
them why he did it.
"We don't
know," said Goss. "We may get an answer. We're going to be going through those
to see if he left some indication as to why he chose to do this."
Agent Goss said he feels that his department had a strong case against Daniel,
and that the jury would have made "the right decision".
Teresa Speir's
daughter, Amanda said that out of respect for David Daniel's family, her family
did not want to go on camera. However, they did issue this statement:
"We feel that it is unfortunate that there are still questions that
we won't have answered, but our prayers are with his family."
