Man’s jail choking death highlights staffing concerns, long Missouri mental health waitlist
By Matt Flener
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JACKSON COUNTY, Missouri (KMBC) — Timothy Beckmann, 64, started choking on his lunch inside a mental-health jail cell at the Jackson County Detention Center.
He took off his clothes, fell, then hit his head on a desk.
A puddle formed beneath him as he sat motionless beside the toilet on May 19, 2025.
But nobody entered Beckmann’s cell for more than five and a half hours to perform CPR, a KMBC 9 News investigation has uncovered.
He had already spent seven months in jail waiting for mental health treatment after a judge ruled him incompetent to stand trial.
But, until now, the exact timeline surrounding Beckmann’s death has not been publicly disclosed. KMBC 9 News obtained the investigative case file from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office through an open records request.
In that file, a caseworker told investigators, “The whole facility failed Beckmann,” citing chronic staffing shortages that prevented required wellness checks.
Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forté declined an interview with KMBC about what happened to Timothy Beckmann, instead sending a statement texted by a spokeswoman.
“In accordance with standard procedures,” Forté said, “I will refrain from commenting on the death of Mr. Beckmann as the applicable statutes of limitations for pursuing a wrongful death claim remain in effect.”
THE WAITING LIST Beckmann’s death comes as Missouri’s mental health system struggles with a growing backlog of criminal defendants deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.
As of this month, 533 people are waiting for placement into mental health treatment after judges have said their trials can no longer move forward due to their mental incompetence.
The average wait time to get mental health treatment so they can stand trial is 14 months.
Most are locked up in county jails across Missouri.
Beckmann, a father of five from St. Louis, spent seven months in jail on the DMH waitlist before his death. KMBC has made efforts to contact his family, but has not heard back.
He ended up in the Jackson County Detention Center after getting released from a long-term care facility.
He was briefly treated at a hospital, “then released onto the street in a city he was not from,” according to Annie Legomsky, Director of Client Advocacy for the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office.
While wandering, Beckmann went into a home, sat at a table to get food, when homeowners called the police. Prosecutors charged him, but a judge said a trial could not move forward until he received restoration to mental competency.
Legomsky believes Beckmann needed mental health treatment, not a lockup in a jail cell.
“He was tortured by his internal demons,” Legomsky said. “He was desperate for help, but he didn’t know how to get it, and he wasn’t able to get it himself.”
Missouri must speed up how defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial receive treatment, Legomsky told KMBC. She pointed to Washington state, where competency evaluations must occur within 10 days, and patients deemed incompetent must either be transferred to treatment or released within a week.
Other states like Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, and Colorado, she said, have all pursued strategies to get people out of jail faster.
“Using the criminal legal system to address severe and persistent mental illness is doomed to fail,” Legomsky said.
Legomsky said Beckmann’s death reflects what advocates have warned about for years.
“If you don’t invest upfront in the resources that people need in evidence-based programming, then the worst that we can imagine is going to happen,” she said.
WAITING LIST GROWS LONGER Beckmann’s story is also part of a class action lawsuit filed last November by The MacArthur Justice Center, the Arch City Defenders, and the ACLU of Missouri, accusing the Missouri Department of Mental Health of failing to provide adequate treatment to people living with serious mental illness and disabilities.
The Missouri Department of Mental Health declined an interview with KMBC about steps to cut down the waitlist, citing the ongoing lawsuit.
In a February budget hearing before Missouri lawmakers, DMH director Valerie Huhn cited several ways the department was trying to keep up within its budget approved by the legislature.
New jail-based competency restoration programs across Missouri. 100 beds to restore are coming online in Jackson County by at least 2030. Outpatient competency restoration programs.
But Huhn acknowledged challenges, including retaining staff and low salary levels.
During testimony, lawmakers also kept coming back to a persistent theme. The waiting list is not dropping.
In the federal civil lawsuit, the ACLU claims people are languishing in jail without treatment.
They cited DMH testimony of the waitlist growing by a third since September 2024 and almost 88% since September 2023.
“NO ONE DIES IN THE JAIL” As for Beckmann’s death, multiple jail employees described what one lieutenant called a longstanding culture inside the Jackson County Detention Center: “No one dies in the jail.”
Investigators wrote that employees believed inmates near death were sent to hospitals so deaths would not officially occur inside the detention center to avoid potential litigation.
A sergeant told investigators when she entered Beckmann’s cell, she found Beckmann cold to the touch, noting rigor mortis had set in.
Jackson County detention officers and jail staff also had several chances to see him struggling or not moving in the jail’s mental health housing unit, according to the investigative case file obtained by KMBC 9 News:
A camera aimed into his jail cell. Jail policy required visual checks of inmates in lockdown every 29 minutes. Multiple officers told investigators those checks of Beckmann did not happen between lunch and dinner on May 19, 2025. Case workers making rounds noticed a slight leg movement about 40 minutes after Beckmann fell. But they didn’t enter his cell.
The Jackson County Medical Examiner eventually ruled Beckmann’s cause of death as choking, saying it was an accident.
The county prosecutor declined charges against any of the jail staff.
Though KMBC obtained the written investigative case file, the Jackson County Sheriff’s office has repeatedly denied KMBC’s request for video of what happened, citing a risk to public safety if video is released, even though the county released video of Marquis Wagner, who died in the jail in 2021. The county told Missouri Sunshine Law applies to each records request individually.
KMBC has also appealed that decision since the county moved inmates into a new detention center last Friday.
KMBC 9 News will continue to investigate the problem and potential solutions to this long waiting list of those deemed incompetent to stand trial and will continue to tell stories with families, attorneys, law enforcement, lawmakers, and Missouri Department of Mental Health officials.
If you have any tips about The Waiting List, email investigates@kmbc.com.
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