On August 22, 2015, Bruce Koeneke was an inmate inside the Winnebago County Jail.
Bruce had been in jail for roughly two weeks having been arrested and charged with burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle, and violating an order of protection.
In the evening of that Saturday, Bruce was alone in his cell when corrections officers found him hanged inside his cell with a bed sheet.
He was pronounced dead at Swedish American Hospital.
The Winnebago Boone County Integrity Task Force was not activated to investigate this death.
The involved agency, in this case it would be the Winnebago County Sheriff’s office, has the discretion to activate the task force. They chose not to because they believe it to be a suicide without any fault or foul play. It also came out from this that they do not activate the task force when it comes to natural causes deaths or overdoses inside the jail.
This was the 11th deadly force incident in the 2010’s and third of 2015.