Miami, Oct 5 : The United States federal prosecutor, who was charged with travelling from Florida to Michigan to have sex with a five-year-old girl, committed suicide on Friday in prison.

Fifty-three year old prosecutor, J D Roy Atchison was arrested on September 16 in Detroit following an Internet sting operation led by the sheriff's department in Macomb County, Mich.

Atchison had been chatting online for two weeks with an undercover detective, who posed as a mother offering to let men have sex with her young daughter, officials said.

At the time of his arrest, Atchison, of Gulf Breeze, Fla, was carrying a Dora the Explorer doll, hoop earrings and petroleum jelly, they added.

Atchison was found unresponsive on Friday morning in the special housing unit of the federal prison in Milan, Mich, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons.

Earlier, Atchison had tried to commit suicide by hanging himself in the Sanilac County Jail, where he was lodged after his arrest on September 16. Following this incident he had been transferred to the Milan prison and was put on a suicide watch.

The alert was removed after Atchison assured his lawyer and a judge that he would not harm himself.

Atchison's lawyer, James C. Thomas of Detroit, was quoted, as saying by The New York Times that he had heard, but not confirmed, that Atchison had hanged himself.

Atchison was an assistant United States attorney in Pensacola and a volunteer coach for girls' softball and basketball teams in Gulf Breeze. (ANI)