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Suspect dies after hanging
By JOY DAVIS-PLATT, Times Staff Writer BROOKSVILLE -- Laren Renee Sims, wanted by California authorities in the killing of her lawyer husband with horse tranquilizers, died Sunday after hanging herself Saturday in Hernando County Jail. Sims, 36, was pronounced dead about 5 a.m. at Brooksville Regional Hospital. "We are cooperating fully with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office," said Steve Owen, a spokesman for Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the Hernando jail and 62 others in 21 states. "As a matter of standard operating procedure, we will be looking at our policies and procedures in an internal investigation." Sheriff's officials said Saturday that Sims hanged herself with a sheet she meticulously braided, then threaded through an air vent in the ceiling of her cell. Authorities said Sims wasn't considered a suicide risk but had been held in the medical wing, where she could be regularly observed. Jail officers said they had checked on Sims every 15 minutes. Sims was transferred to Hernando after her March 18 arrest in the Panhandle town of Destin. She was held without bail after being arrested on warrants related to Hernando burglary and credit card fraud charges from almost 10 years ago. San Joaquin County, California, sheriff's officials on Friday formally sought to extradite Sims from Florida to face charges that she killed her husband, Sacramento attorney Larry McNabney. Police there said she buried McNabney, 52, in a California vineyard. San Joaquin sheriff's deputies said Sims disappeared in January with as much as $500,000 she raised by selling off McNabney's truck, horses and other possessions. Nellie Stone, spokesman for the California agency, said Sims spent much of that money on clothes and cars for herself and for her alleged accomplice, 21-year-old Sarah Dutra, who had been a secretary in McNabney's office. Dutra is still being held in the case. Sims told police her husband died after she and Dutra gave him horse tranquilizers in a Los Angeles hotel room. Authorities said Sims may have come to Florida because of family connections, including her mother, who lives north of Brooksville. "The state attorney's office will now have to make a determination about where to go from here," Stone said. "This obviously changes things." Sims' attorney, Tom Hogan Jr. of Brooksville, is expected to release a statement today.
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