McNeal had been jailed after an arrest earlier this month on an aggravated-assault charge. The cause of her death has not been determined. The causes of two other inmate deaths this year also remain undetermined, according to Sheriff Bill Waybourn.

Waybourn has said none of this year’s deaths have been attributed to abuse or neglect. He also defended the jail’s record of reporting deaths, saying Tarrant County is among the few large counties that regularly issues public statements about them.

The latest scrutiny follows the June death of 46-year-old Mack Greer, who had been arrested for theft. Jail video showed staff removing Greer from his cell and taking him to JPS Hospital, where he later died. Waybourn said Greer had acted erratically and banged his head while in the jail’s general population. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons raised concerns about fatal head injuries, a characterization that angered the sheriff.

On Tuesday, Waybourn said an autopsy found that Greer died from an undiagnosed medical condition. He said people sometimes arrive at jail seriously ill without their condition being known.

Waybourn has argued that the attention on Tarrant County is disproportionate, citing higher cumulative jail-death totals elsewhere in Texas since he took office in 2017: 149 in Harris County, 115 in Bexar County, 85 in Dallas County and 79 in Tarrant County. He said public reporting may make Tarrant’s deaths more visible and accused critics of politicizing a problem faced by jails broadly.

The county’s death count and unresolved causes have renewed demands for an independent review. The figures alone do not establish why people died or whether jail practices played a role; the undetermined cases leave key questions unanswered.