Janice Lynn Ridgeway, 55, was found dead outside the Charlotte County Jail’s visitation center Tuesday morning.
Charlotte County Sheriff's Office
Police have released the identity of the person who was found dead outside the Charlotte County Jail’s visitation center.
A jail worker stumbled across the body of Janice Lynn Ridgeway, 55, during morning patrol at the Punta Gorda jail on Tuesday morning, according to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.
She was by a row of benches that act as the building’s waiting room for recently released detainees and those waiting to pick someone up, according to a news release. Jail visitation was temporarily shut down.
A dead body was found inside the Charlotte County Jail’s visitation center Tuesday morning. Charlotte County Sheriff's Office
“At this time it does not appear that there was any other person involved in the death,” the office said in a statement.
Ridgeway was arrested Monday around 1:30 a.m. on battery. She was out on bond by noon.
“Upon her release, it is believed at this time she stayed on the property through the evening until she was discovered deceased,” the sheriff office said in a statement.
The medical examiner will be conducting an autopsy to determine her cause of death.
This story was originally published July 30, 2019 at 11:49 AM.
Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow. Support my work with a digital subscription
