Inmate Patrick Leonard died Sunday night of an apparent suicide on death row in Chillicothe, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said in an email to The Associated Press.
Leonard, 47, who did not have a previous criminal record, was condemned to die for the slaying of his former girlfriend but didn’t have a scheduled execution date.
Leonard, formerly of New Baltimore, was sentenced to death for the 2000 killing of his ex-girlfriend, 23-year-old Dawn Flick, in her New Baltimore home.
“Prior to this incident, Leonard was not considered violent and had not been in trouble with police,” the Ohio Supreme Court noted in a 2004 ruling upholding his death sentence. “The fact that Leonard had committed these crimes was described as shocking and extremely out of character.”
According to court records, Leonard was angry at Flick for ending their relationship and refusing to reconcile.
Records say Leonard handcuffed Flick, tried to rape her and shot her three times.
The last death row suicide in Ohio was in 2013, when Billy Slagle hanged himself just days before his scheduled execution. Slagle used a belt in his cell on death row, also at Chillicothe Correctional Institution.
Slagle called his nearly three decades in prison torture and said he was taking his destiny into his own hands.
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