After the 24-year-old's arrest, a judge ordered him to a state psychiatric hospital to get help. But like an increasing number of the mentally ill in the US, he sat in jail for months as he waited for a bed to open.
Other inmates said Mitchell paced naked in a cell often covered in his own filth. Family members said they were told he sometimes refused to eat or take medication, and jail records show he manically yelled. He grew gaunt and by August 19 he was dead, having shed at least 16kg.
A state medical examiner has yet to issue a cause of death and police are investigating Mitchell's case, but his family and civil rights and mental health advocates are outraged that he was allowed to waste away over a US$5 offence.
Mentally ill inmates are being warehoused for weeks, months or, in rare cases, years in jails around the nation, waiting to go to state mental hospitals where experts determine if they are well enough to stand trial and treat those who aren't.
Advocates say the delays are leaving vulnerable defendants to languish, sometimes with tragic results.
In recent years, a defendant with mental illness was raped repeatedly at the Los Angeles jail as he waited eight months for treatment, according to a lawsuit.
Three former guards at the Santa Clara County jail in California have been charged with murder for allegedly beating to death a mentally ill inmate who refused to take his medication.
A third inmate in Washington state committed suicide during a wait for treatment.
In Virginia, officials said 89 inmates are waiting in jail for court-ordered mental health treatment.
The backlog for Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, where Mitchell was to go, is averaging 73 days.
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