A West Virginia man charged last week with brutally beating his sister, who awoke from a two-year coma and named him as her assailant, has died, according to officials.
Daniel Palmer, 55, was booked into South Central Regional Jail in Charleston on July 15, charged with attempted murder and malicious wounding for the June 2020 attack on his sister Wanda Palmer.
Palmer was “uncooperative while in custody and during booking procedures at the jail," the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security told NBC News in a statement.
On Wednesday he was transported to Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital after an evaluation by jail medical staff, according to officials.
He was pronounced dead Thursday, the statement said.
The West Virginia Dept. of Homeland Security ruled out suicide as a cause of death but no further details of his death were given.
Wanda Palmer was severely beaten in her trailer in Cottageville, West Virginia, on June 10, 2020. She was discovered so badly bludgeoned and covered in blood that responding officers assumed she was mortally injured, according to a complaint.
For the next two years she was in a comatose state.
Miraculously, she started to regain some consciousness last month and pointed to her brother as the person who assaulted her.
When asked why Daniel assaulted her, Wanda stated that he was "mean,” according to a complaint in the case.
During an initial court appearance last Friday, Palmer became combative and deputies had to drag him out of the courthouse.
Palmer had long denied any involvement in his sister’s beating. Investigators said that the brother had always been a person of interest and that a witness stated “that he saw Daniel Palmer in the front doorway at Wanda’s trailer at midnight on the night she was assaulted,” according to the complaint.