“She was breathing when she left.”

When it comes to the World’s Worst Excuses, one would be hard-pressed to beat those six words uttered by a member of the Davis County Sheriff’s Office in the wake of a Dec. 21, 2016, inmate death at the Davis County Jail.

Five days before Christmas, 28-year-old Heather Ashton Miller was arrested in Clearfield and booked into the Farmington jail on suspicion of drug possession. Five days after Christmas, Davis County prosecutors filed three misdemeanor charges against her.

Posthumously.

In between those two sad events came an infinitely sadder one. Heather Miller died of a spleen so violently lacerated that an autopsy showed it had almost been split completely in half by blunt-force trauma.

• RELATED: Weber detectives say Davis jail staff tainted crime scene after inmate’s death

So, what happened? Good question. And one that everybody is asking — including Miller’s family, her friends, the reading public, this columnist, and even the Weber County Sheriff’s Office detectives who investigated the incident.

Unfortunately, we may never know.

But thanks to some great investigative work by Standard-Examiner reporter Mark Shenefelt, we’re at least getting a little light shed on the subject. And it’s illuminating a tale of professional incompetence at best and criminal intent at worst.

• RELATED: Daggett County Sheriff, 4 staff charged after inmates abused with stun guns

The WCSO investigation reports that just before 6 p.m. on Dec. 21 Miller was injured when she slipped while getting down from the top bunk in her cell. Her cellmate claims to have witnessed the fall, saying Miller slammed to the concrete floor, tried to get up and fell again, striking her head on a desk.

Miller was moved to another cell, and about two hours later was taken to the jail’s medical unit. At 9:01 p.m. Miller left the jail by ambulance. She was pronounced dead at 10:06 p.m. at McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden.

Jail officials didn’t call in Weber investigators until 11:13 p.m.; WCSO detectives Jeff Lemberes and Garn Sever arrived on the scene at 12:20 a.m.

And here’s where the story turns into an episode of “Keystone Cops, Davis County Edition.”

When Lemberes asked to see the jail cells involved, DCSO Sgt. Roberta Wall said the cell had already been cleaned and was being used.

“I told Sgt. Wall to please tell me she is kidding,” an incredulous Lemberes writes in his report. “She was not.”

But that’s just the beginning. When Lemberes then asked to see the medical unit where Miller was taken, Wall replied: “That’s all clean. We just need you guys to get whatever paperwork you need for your case.”

Lemberes tried to explain to Wall that anywhere Miller was during the incident was a crime scene, and that’s when Wall offered her now-infamous feeblest of explanations. Wall told Lemberes she doesn’t think Miller’s case should be treated as an in-custody death because — wait for it — “she was breathing when she left,” adding “She didn’t die here, she died at the hospital.”

Not to be outdone, Sgt. DeeAnn Servey, spokeswoman with the Davis sheriff’s office, doubled down on Wall’s comments by telling the Standard-Examiner: “She did not die in our custody and I cannot comment on what happened when she was at the hospital.”

Which, I suppose, is intended to deflect blame and make us wonder, “Saaaaay, just what DID happen when she was at the hospital? Maybe them doctors killed her!”

The real question we should all be asking is “What happened at the jail?” And the short answer is: Nobody knows. All potential evidence was destroyed.

Yes, but at least jail staff members have been brought up on evidence-tampering charges, or lost their jobs, or were suspended, or received written reprimands over the sloppy handling of Heather Miller’s death, right?

Hardly. Instead, Davis County Sheriff Todd Richardson offered the jaw-dropping explanation that, “internally, there was not any type of policy breach that even merited to the point of anyone being written up or anything.”

Utah leads the nation in per capita jail deaths, with the Davis County Jail having one of the highest rates in the state. Since 2005, the Davis jail has had 17 deaths. Five of those occurred last year.

And now, Sheriff Richardson, another inmate dies — from injuries sustained on your watch, in your care — and you’re trying to tell me you have no policy in place to address the troubling questions that arise?

If we’re to believe the Weber detectives’ report, the only witness to Miller’s fatal injuries was her cellmate. And the jail’s response was to eliminate any possible clues as to what may or may not have happened? I don’t know much about law enforcement, but I’ve seen enough police procedurals to know that cleaning a crime scene before the cops show up is what guilty people do.

There is, however, a silver lining. If I ever did kill someone, I’d make sure it was in Davis County. And then I could simply use the Davis County Jail Defense, to wit:

Technically, the victim was still breathing when I dumped him outside the hospital and cleaned up all the blood. And frankly, I cannot comment on what happened once doctors got hold of him.

Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/MarkSaal.