An inmate at the Warren County Jail died Friday in an apparent suicide, authorities said.

Roger L. Stuart, 47, of Aurora, Colo., was found strangled by a sheet that had been wrapped around an intercom box on the wall, according to Warren County Sheriff Kevin Harrison.

Stuart allegedly died from asphyxiation by kneeling and using his own body weight against the sheet to strangle himself.

Stuart had been at the jail since being arrested March 6 for felony drug possession after a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper stopped his vehicle on westbound Interstate 70. Among the contents of the vehicle were a pipe that tested positive for methamphetamine and bundles of cash totaling about $50,000.

Stuart and his wife, Maggie Beach, 29, who also was arrested on drug charges, had travelled to the East Coast and were on their way back to Colorado, authorities said.

During an investigation of the death, Harrison said Stuart’s cell mates stated that he was worried about the consequences the arrest and losing the money would have on his children in Colorado.

According to Harrison, Stuart had been placed in a three-day lockdown after disobeying directions from jail staff. He was confined to his cell in a block that contains a common area and a number of other cells.

Harrison added that cameras monitor the public area of the cell block, but not the individual units because of privacy restrictions involving toilets built into each cell.

Stuart allegedly closed the slot in the cell door used to deliver meals and was not visible to other inmates or jail staff. Some time later, a cell mate looked in and began signaling for the attention of jail staff, Harrison said.

He added that Stuart was suspected to have delivered a shipment of narcotics somewhere on the East Coast in exchange for the $50,000, and could possibly have been working for a third party.

A representative of the St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s Office, where Stuart’s body was taken, said an official cause of death won’t be finalized for four to six weeks.

Harrison said the sheriff’s department does a full investigative report any time there is a death in custody, and that the circumstances of Stuart’s death are a “horribly bad situation.”