Two Mahoning County Sheriff's Deputies have been suspended without pay following the suicide of an inmate, but questions still remain about the death of Kevin Burkey.

According to the a report from the Sheriff's department, Deputy Tyler Peters has been suspended for 300 hours, and Deputy Nicholas Argeras has been suspended for 40 hours following an investigation in to the death of Burkey who was found hanging from a bed sheet in his jail cell on August 25.

The investigation determined that Deputy Peters not only failed to conduct observations of inmates in his pod on that day, but also went on a break without waiting for relief from another deputy.

According to a report from the Sheriff, Deputy Argeras also went on break without checking with Peters to determine if both men would be on break at the same time.

The investigation concluded that information compiled when Burkey was booked into jail gave no hint that he had suicidal tendencies, but some relevant information may have not been passed along to jail authorities.

Sheriff's employees were told that Burkey had been arrested at St. Elizabeth Hospital earlier in the day for a stealing drugs, and had experienced a drug overdose.

Investigators say they learned after the suicide that jail personnel were not told that hospital security found Burkey walking on the ledge of the hospital parking deck, ingesting a vial of a white substance.

After the officer convinced Burkey to get off the ledge, he was evaluated at the hospital and “pink slipped”.

According to the Ohio Department of Mental Health, a Pink Slip is a document utilized to obtain emergency hospitalization for an individual who is mentally ill subject to hospitalization by court order, and represents a substantial risk of physical harm to him/herself or others if allowed to remain at liberty.

The report does not say why the information was not passed on to the jail personnel when Burkey was booked.

The investigation says once he was in jail, Burkey did tell a deputy that he needed to talk with a psychiatrist because no one knew what he was going through.

The Deputy says he explained the procedure for requesting a medical visit and gave Burkey a medical form. The Deputy did not inform Deputy Peters that Burkey had told him that he wanted to speak with a psychiatrist.

Investigators later interviewed an inmate who said that Burkey told him that he could not read or write, and asked the fellow inmate to fill out a medical slip for him.

The inmate told investigators that he wrote on the slip, “I need to see mental health ASAP”. A detective found the medical slip still in the jail pod in-box after Burkey had taken his own life.

Another inmate interviewed by investigators says that Burkey complained about the liquid diet being fed to him in jail and said, “I tried to kill myself. I shouldn't be on a liquid diet.”