MERCER CO. MAN Inmate commits suicide in cell

The killer hanged himself between inmate bed checks, a prison spokeswoman said.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
MERCER, Pa. -- Guards at the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh making a routine inmate head count found Shane R. Sloan dead in his cell, an apparent suicide.
Sloan, 29, of South Center Street, Pine Township, Mercer County, had been convicted of first-degree murder in Mercer County Common Pleas Court May 24 for the Feb. 5, 2001, slaying of his mother, Susan Fleeger, 48, in the trailer home they shared.
Carol Scire, administrative assistant to the superintendent of the prison, said Sloan hanged himself with a bed sheet and was dead when guards found him around 2 a.m. Monday.
The last head count had been done at 11:15 p.m. Sunday, Scire said.
The Allegheny County coroner's office has ruled the death a suicide. The body will be cremated, Scire said.
How mother died
Sloan had suicidal tendencies, according to testimony presented at his trial, and had tried to kill himself the morning that his mother died.
He testified in court that she tried to prevent him from harming himself so he struck and strangled her.
Scire said Sloan was in a single cell in the prison's diagnostic center, where all new inmates are placed for evaluation upon entering the prison system. The center is separate from the regular inmate population.
Once his evaluation was complete, Sloan would have been transferred to the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill for classification and assignment to a prison in the state system, Scire said.
He had been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole by Judge Michael Wherry immediately upon being found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury of six men and six women.