Alleged drug kingpin dies in DeKalb jail
by Andy Phelan
andy@dekalbchamp.com
Umoja Bakari
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An alleged drug kingpin from Ohio who was featured the TV show America’s Most Wanted and was arrested June 24 by DeKalb County Sheriff’s Fugitive Squad is dead of an apparent suicide, said a spokeswoman for the sheriff.
Umoja “Iddy” Iddi Bakari, 28, of Yellow Springs, Ohio, who was also known as Elijah Smith or Vmoja F. Bakari, died during early morning hours of June 27 in the county jail of what appears to be suicide.
The body has been transported to the Medical Examiner’s Office, where an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.
According to sheriff department spokeswoman Mikki Jones, a detention officer found Bakari hanging by his T-shirt at about 3:30 a.m. and he was not breathing. The shirt was wrapped around his neck and hooked to the hinge of the door, she said.
Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, and a DeKalb Medical Center physician pronounced him dead at 4 a.m., Jones said.
According to Jones, at about 1:30 a.m., Bakari had somehow broken the sprinkler head in his cell, which upset his cellmate and led to a fight. To separate the inmates, Bakari was moved to an attorney’s booth, where he was later found hanging by his shirt.
In addition to the medical examiner’s autopsy and morbidity report, the Office of Professional Standards is conducting an investigation.
Bakari, indicted in Ohio on 22 counts of drug trafficking and money laundering, was connected to a vicious murder involving a teen-age drug dealer in 2002.
Sheriff’s fugitive squad officers arrested him June 24 after they staked out a north DeKalb hotel where he was staying.
According to reports on America’s Most Wanted Web site, Bakari is a citizen of the Philippines but a permanent U.S. resident. His last known location was Yellow Springs, but authorities there thought he had fled to Los Angeles, Phoenix or Miami.
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