Deputies investigate inmate's suicide

  TAMPA -- A man accused in an armed robbery died Thursday at Tampa General Hospital, about 11 hours after an inmate discovered him hanging from a makeshift noose fashioned from jail bed sheets, deputies said.

Harold Drier, 42, was arrested Wednesday on a robbery with a deadly weapon charge after holding up Vince's Grocery at 7215 Rome Ave., police said. The store's surveillance video helped put him behind bars, police said.

Shortly after leaving a first appearance hearing at the jail Thursday morning, Drier returned to a cell in the jail's intake housing section, a pod where inmates are held for their first 24 hours after being jailed, said Hillsborough Sheriff's Office spokesman Debbie Carter.

Within six minutes, Carter said, an inmate found Drier hanging by a bed sheet from the top portion of a bunk bed. He had "apparently taken a bed sheet off his bed, tied it around his neck and leaned forward," Carter said.

The jail's nursing staff helped get him to Tampa General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 9 p.m. Thursday.

-- Casey Cora, Times staff writer

[Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office]