Newport Beach police arrested Charlotte Engle on suspicion of a DUI-related offense July 1 and took the 54-year-old Huntington Beach resident to Orange County Jail. During booking, jail officials determined Engle suffered from high-blood pressure and took her to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.
That's where she died Sunday.
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The Orange County Sheriff's Department, which runs the jail and the Coroner's Division, this morning revealed the medical examiner was informed about 4 p.m. Wednesday that Engle's condition continued to deteriorate at the hospital and that she was removed from a respirator before being pronounced dead.
An autopsy is now scheduled.
As with in all in-custody deaths, the Orange County District Attorney's office will investigate and post the results of its probe on the OCDA website.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.