The death of a 20-year-old in the Gwinnett County Jail has only raised more questions for his family after they say he was first unfairly accused in a police shooting at a mental health facility.
Austin Collins died January 14 inside of his jail cell, according to the GBI. His cause of death has not been released and the death remains under GBI investigation.
But for nearly two years before then, Collins’ mother has been fighting to get her son out of jail after she says the place where he went for help ended up becoming the place where he was involved in a police shooting. His mother told Channel 2 Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson it will never make sense how she went to get him help and he ended up dead in a jail cell.
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“I went everywhere I could go for help,” Syreeta Collins said. “They dropped the ball on his life and, given these circumstances, I just don’t want to drop the ball in his death.”
It was March 2022 when Collins noticed her son Austin was suffering some medical complications from diabetes and possibly having paranoid thoughts. She took him to an emergency room but she says he was transferred to Summit Ridge Behavioral Health Hospital because no ER beds were available.