(WWJ) The Detroit man convicted of killing missing 13-year-old Na'Ziyah Harris is dead.
The Michigan Department of Corrections confirmed to WWJ Newsradio 950 that 43-year-old Jarvis Butts was found dead in his prison cell Thursday morning.
Michigan State Police investigators are now at the facility where he was being held; that's the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson, Michigan.
Officials said prison staffers who found Butts attempted to save his life, but they were unsuccessful.
The death is being investigated as a suicide at this time, but no further details have been released about how he died.
Butts pleaded second-degree murder in connection with the death of Harris, who was last seen getting off a school bus on Jan. 9, 2024, on Detroit's east side.
Though the teen's body was never found, prosecutors believe Butts killed her after grooming and then sexually assaulting her over a number of years. Prosecutors alleged that Harris was pregnant at the time she disappeared, and that Butts was the unborn child's father. He knew Harris through family connections.
Butts was sentenced on March 12 to 60 years in prison on those charges and five other cases connected to the sexual assault of other children.
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