Joyce Nathan, 39, a Cook County Jail inmate awaiting trial on a murder charge, died Saturday afternoon after falling or jumping from a fourth-floor window at Cook County Hospital.
Nathan was in the jail’s unit in the hospital recovering from stomach surgery performed on Thursday, said Bill Cunningham, a Cook County Sheriff’s spokesman.
Guards stationed outside the ward saw Nathan going out the window, and they believe she was trying to escape rather than commit suicide, Cunningham said, though he declined to say what evidence led to that assumption. He could not say whether windows on the ward were locked, but he said that was being looked into.
Most windows in the hospital can be opened to provide ventilation because the building is not air conditioned, a hospital administrator said Saturday.
The administrator said Nathan landed on the roof of an extension of the first floor. He said hospital medical staff tried to treat her injuries for about 30 minutes but she was pronounced dead at around 3 p.m.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office scheduled an autopsy for Sunday morning.
Details of the murder case for which Nathan was being held were not available early Sunday.
