Ryan Brunn Dead After Apparent Suicide

Ryan Brunn, , is dead.

"Ryan Brunn was found unresponsive in his cell at 4:15 p.m.," Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kristen Stancil said in a statement. "He was pronounced dead at a local hospital at 5:37 p.m. of an apparent suicide."

This case has been referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, she said.

The statement does not mention if he was under suicide watch.

"Don't have that info at this time," Stancil wrote in an email to Canton-Sixes Patch.

Gwendolyn Hogan, another DOC spokeswoman, told Patch that Brunn "was in his individual cell so he wasn't anywhere else off by himself or whatnot. All inmates have individual cells." 

Asked how Brunn may have killed himself, Hogan said "those are details that are under investigation, and the department doesn't comment on pending investigations."

It was just this past Tuesday that  as part of an extraordinary deal that included a detailed confession before a packed courtroom and a sentence of life without parole.

Jorelys, a Canton Elementary first-grader, was  where she lived. Authorities  in a compacting Dumpster from the complex on Dec. 5. An autopsy found that she likely died 60 to 90 minutes after she disappeared. Jorelys had been , GBI director Vernon Keenan said during a Dec. 6 press conference.

On Dec. 7, law enforcement arrested , who'd recently moved to area from Dahlonega.

After spending more than a month at the , he was officially turned over to the Department of Corrections at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and transferred to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

Agents from the GBI's Milledgeville office are in Jackson now to investigate Brunn's death, spokesman John Bankhead told Canton-Sixes Patch.

"An autopsy will be done at the GBI crime lab hopefully tomorrow," he said.

Jorelys' father, Ricardo Galarza, told CNN en Espanol that news of Brunn's death partly made him "feel good but, on the other hand, it doesn't because my daughter will never be with me again."

Galarza said that he felt that a lifetime of Brunn being watched after, "eating three times a day (and) sleeping with air conditioning" while in prison was not enough.

"What I wanted was for them to put him in the electric chair and burn him," the father said. "I would have taken him there myself and prepared it, so he would burn."

The girl's mother, Jocelyn Rivera, told WAGA-TV of Brunn's death: “This is the kind of justice that I was expecting for him for all the damage that he made to my little daughter... Now I can say that I feel satisfied.”

Stay tuned to Canton-Sixes Patch for updates.

For all of Canton-Sixes Patch's coverage of the Jorelys Rivera case, go to http://canton-ga.patch.com/topics/jorelys-rivera.