PORT ANGELES — Eight days before he killed himself inside his detention center cell, Joshua Petty wrote a suicide note.
He addressed it to his brother, whose car he was accused of stealing, writing, “If your reading this I’m already dead. Life is to hard,” according to court records.
That same day, March 2, a Clallam County sheriff’s deputy arrested the 17-year-old for burglary and theft and brought him to the county youth center on West 18th Street, where an intake officer discussed the letter with Petty.
Two days later, detention staff again talked with Petty about his letter. Both times Petty said he was OK, Clallam County Juvenile and Family Services Director Pete Peterson said.
But during about 20 minutes alone in his room March 10 before his cellmate returned from court with a corrections officer, Petty hanged himself with a bedsheet.
The first death ever in Juvenile Services custody is now bringing questions from people who say something more should have been done, and frustration from those who say there was nothing that could have prevented it.
‘Major indications’
“There were major indications,” Petty’s mother, Leann Stoughton, said last week. “The young man should have been on suicide watch in a glass room.
“Things need to be changed.”
