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Mitsu Yasukawa/The Star-LedgerThe Newark police department's former headquarters, where the Green Street jail is located, is shown in this file photo.
NEWARK — A prisoner inside the Newark Police Department's municipal lock-up hung himself Saturday afternoon, and Internal Affairs investigators are now probing the suicide, authorities said.
Jason Lowther, 29, of Newark, was found hanging inside a cell at the city's Green Street jail at 5:30 on Saturday, according to Thomas Fennelly, Essex County's Chief Assistant Prosecutor. Lowther was taken to University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m.
Lowther was arrested Saturday on drug charges, according to Fennelly, who did not say how the 29-year-old hung himself. The Regional Medical Examiner's Office ruled Lowther's death a suicide early this morning.
His death marks the second suicide at the city's jail in the past 18 months. Tyron Benson used a belt to hang himself from a cell block's bars on Thanksgiving Day in 2010. The Essex County Prosecutor's Office also launched a probe into that death, but the out come of the Benson case remains unclear.
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