Dare County, N.C. (WTKR) -A Nags Head murder suspect was found dead in a jail cell over the weekend in Dare County.
At approximately 11:38 p.m., Sunday, July 14, 2013, detention officers found 21-year-old Enrico Luciano Mascaro unresponsive at the Dare County Detention Center in Manteo.
Dare County EMS teams were called and Mascaro was subsequently pronounced dead.
The Dare County Sheriff's Office says that Mascaro's death is being treated as an apparent suicide.
Mascaro was charged with shooting his childhood friend, 18-year-old Danielle Dennis-Towne of Illinois, exactly two years earlier on July 14, 2011.
Dennis-Towne and Mascaro had grown up together in Illinois and she had come to the Outer Banks that summer to visit his family.
When Mascaro's parents reported the pair missing, a nationwide alert was issued following the discovery of a crime scene at a nature trail in Kitty Hawk.
Mascaro's car was then found in a parking lot in Clifton Forge, Virginia with Dennis-Towne's body discovered in the trunk.
During a hearing in Dare County last week, Mascaro learned that prosecutors did not plan to seek the death penalty against him.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is conducting an investigation into Mascaro's death, which the Dare County Sheriff's Office says is customary in these cases.
