Garner Inmate Found Dead Was Murder Suspect

HARTFORD (AP) — A Coventry man charged with murdering his pregnant girlfriend in front of their two children in April killed himself in his jail cell at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, a state prison official said.

Alfredo Ferrer, 43, apparently hanged himself with a bedsheet and his cellmate notified correctional officers at about 4:30 am Wednesday, Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett said.

Prison officials are investigating Ferrer’s death, and the chief medical examiner’s office was to perform an autopsy.

Garnett did not release additional details. He said correctional officers are required to tour each cell block every 30 minutes.

“It’s under investigation and that will all be determined,” he said when asked whether guards performed the required checks.

Ferrer was found with the bedsheet tied around his neck and the other end tied to the cell door at the high-security prison, Garnett said. He was taken to Danbury Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Ferrer was facing a murder charge in the shooting of 27-year-old Amanda Realie in their apartment on April 14. Realie died three days later, and doctors were not able to save the unborn child.

Coventry officers arrested Ferrer the day of the shooting after a tense standoff in the parking lot of the nearby Bidwell Tavern, where Ferrer worked as a dishwasher. Frightened tavern customers were ushered by employees into the basement during the episode.

When officers arrived, they say they encountered a blood-splattered Ferrer in the parking lot, holding a gun and his 2-year-old son and threatening to kill himself. Neighbors said his 5-year-old son was by his side.

Officers eventually managed to subdue Ferrer with a stun gun, and the two children were unharmed.

Investigators said Ferrer later told them that he and Realie were fighting over her heroin use and his history as a sex offender when he accidentally shot her in the face.

A police report says Ferrer became so angry during the argument that he believed “the devil is in me” and tried to hit Realie with his .38-caliber revolver. Ferrer told police that Realie swung at the gun and it fired.

Ferrer’s lawyer has suggested that his client’s confession to state police was coerced.

Court officials said Ferrer was convicted in the 1980s of sexually assaulting a minor, then escaped from prison in 1991 and remained a fugitive until he was arrested for marijuana possession in New York in 2002.

Ferrer’s death comes a month after a Rockville Superior Court ruled that there was enough evidence to put him on trial in the murder case.

He was scheduled to appear in court again on Friday.