Maryland State Police are investigating the eleventh prisoner death this year and second in the last week, officials announced Wednesday.
Wenhui Sun, 36, died following an altercation with two other inmates at the Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown on Tuesday, state police said in a news release. Sun was taken to the prison’s medical unit, where he was pronounced dead, according to state police.
Online court records show Sun was serving a nine-year sentence in Maryland. Last year, Montgomery County Police officers arrested Sun, who is originally from California, for an alleged gold bar scam.
Police accused Sun of posing as a federal agent. He reached out to victims, telling them someone had stolen their identity, and convinced them to transfer their assets into gold bars for what he said was safekeeping in the U.S. Department of Treasury. Police arrested him the day he reportedly was scheduled to leave Maryland for California.
The two other prisoners involved in the fight, who have not been identified, are suspects in Sun’s death, state police said.
Sun’s death is the 11th in a Maryland state prison this year and the second in the last week. Late last week, 23-year-old Deon Smith died while incarcerated at the Jessup Correctional Institution in Anne Arundel County.
Smith’s death is the third that state police are investigating at the Anne Arundel County facility from this year. Warren Michael Griffin, 61, died there in February, and Brian Bell, 42, died at the prison in July.
This year, three people died while jailed at the Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover: Ray Stephen Oselmo, 36; Donyell Morris, 24; and Shane Lanham, 28. Another prisoner at the Somerset County facility was charged in Lanham’s death, while the others remain under investigation.
State police are also investigating three North Branch Correctional Institution prisoners’ deaths: Patrick Candeloro, 38; Billy Sorrow, 50; and Elias Alvarado, 30. Lawrence Antonio Borom, 21, died while he was serving time at Roxbury Correctional Institution in Washington County earlier this year.




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