Friends remember suicide victim

Friends of Joshua Andrew Gregory, who died in a Carson City jail cell on Saturday, say they will miss him like a member of their family.

Former roommate Jessica Mills, who was among friends who held a memorial service Monday night, said the Carson City 20-year-old did not drink as much as was portrayed in an article in Tuesday's Nevada Appeal.

"He worked the graveyard shift," she said. "We knew him since he moved here and he was never really the partier."

Carson City Deputy Coroner Eric Cantlin confirmed that Gregory died by asphyxiation when he hung himself using a bed sheet.

Mills said Gregory was not one to follow the crowd.

"He was his own person," she said. "He didn't do what everyone else did."

Mills said that Gregory suffered from depressions the entire time he lived in Carson, but that he never said he wanted to move back to Texas.

Gregory was one of several workers who moved to Carson to work at the Target store in Jacks Valley.

She said Gregory made comments that might have given his friends clues to his state of mind, but they didn't pick up on them.

"He sometimes made comments like he wanted to get out of here, but we didn't take them seriously," she said. "We were Josh's family; that's why he left the note."

In the note, Gregory said he "loved everybody" and wished he could party with them one more time.

Mills said she thought Gregory's incarceration may have been what prompted his death.

"I think that when he got in there he thought about and planned it and that's why he waited until two days before he got out," she said. "His friends really miss him."

Gregory's death is the first in the new Carson City Jail.