ST. LOUIS (AP) – A Mexican citizen accused of killing four people in Kansas and one in Missouri in 2016 hanged himself from a light fixture in his St. Louis jail cell.
Pablo Serrano-Vitorino was found alone in his cell at 2:02 a.m. Tuesday He was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later, said Koran Addo, spokesman for St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.
Addo declined further comment but St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Serrano-Vitorino hanged himself and left a note written in Spanish. Edwards was out of town and didn’t know if Serrano-Vitorino was on suicide watch or when jailers had last checked on him.
Serrano-Vitorino, 43, who was in the U.S. illegally, was accused of fatally shooting four men at a home in Kansas City, Kansas, on the night of March 7, 2016. He was arrested a day later and 170 miles away in Montgomery County, Missouri, where he was accused of killing Randy Nordman of New Florence. He was charged with first-degree murder in all five deaths.
He was being held in St. Louis awaiting an October trial in Nordman’s death on a change of venue. Missouri prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.