Supplemental Documentation No Way Out WFAA TV

Our “No Way Out: Covid Behind Bars” investigation had a robust digital presence in addition to
our half-hour special report.

Those elements are gathered at www.wfaa.com/no-way-out.
Here’s a summary of the digital elements there (we have also appended many of these
elements to the end of this document):
• Our main story wove together a long-form narrative about one character from our TV
report with an investigative overview of how the Texas prison system mishandled the
virus.
• Our obituary pages told the stories of nearly 200 prisoners and staff who died of Covid-
19 as of mid-December 2020.
• Our shorter sidebar revealed how prisoners set fires to bring attention to deteriorating
conditions, and included previously unreported information about how the prison
system’s persistent refusal to meet state fire safety standards made these dangerous
blazes possible.
• Our detailed interactive timeline tracked the agency’s action and inaction, as well as the
spread of the disease.
• Our data explainer detailed the limitations and gaps in numbers the Texas prison system
released throughout the pandemic.
• Our audio components conveyed the emotional impact of what it has been like living in
a Texas prison during this historic pandemic by featuring letters, written by current
prisoners, and read by former prisoners.
Reaction
The Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins, one of the country’s most respected broadcast journalism
teachers and coaches, recognized our work in a roundup of coronavirus coverage. “This is
exactly the kind of work we need to focus attention on,” he wrote.
After refusing to grant us an interview, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice stayed silent
after our story ran – other than to release additional names of prisoners who had died from
Covid months after their deaths, after our story pointed out significant delays in the agency’s
public disclosure of basic information. (See Tweets detailing this here, here and here.)
The mayor of Palestine, Tx., Steve Presley, emailed us after our investigation was broadcast and
published, lauding our accuracy and willingness to take on the topic.
Charity Nellums, widow of correctional officer Eric Johnson featured in our piece, also emailed
to thank us for our work.
A Houston defense lawyer reached out as well, asking if we could use his story to help argue for
compassionate release for his clients.
Legendary Texas-based criminal justice writer Pamela Colloff also complimented our work on
Twitter and urged readers and viewers to spend time with the significant extra content
accompanying the main story.
Our work also garnered kudos from a civil rights reporter at the Texas Observer.
Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other
timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it
delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
By: Al Tompkins
December 16, 2020
A local TV station investigates the largest

prison system in the country
I have mentioned that The Marshall Project is a partner in Poynter’s Covering Jails and Police
project. Now Marshall and WFAA-TV in Dallas are working together to investigate the Texas
prison system — the largest prison system in the country — which was understaffed and
underfunded before the pandemic. Now its prisons are coronavirus incubators.
When prisoners set fires in state prisons to protest COVID-19 conditions, they did not get the
attention they might have expected. Marshall reports:
The conflagrations don’t always have the intended effect; in fact, prison officials find them easy
to ignore. That’s because more than 200 Texas prison buildings do not have working fire alarm
systems.
The Marshall Project and WFAA’s review of state records found that the prison system has
flouted fire-safety officials for at least a decade, every year failing to correct the same basic
problems with non-functioning smoke and fire alarms and unsafe wiring. Many prison kitchens
do not have adequate fire suppression systems, and some units have electrical wiring that is a
hodge-podge of extension cords, according to records from the State Fire Marshal’s Office.
This is exactly the kind of work we need to focus attention on. Prisons and jails account for
249,000 COVID-19 cases and 1,657 deaths, not including 62,000 cases involving prison staff
and at least 108 prison staff deaths.
(The Marshall Project)
This is a good place for me to mention that I will be leading eight one-hour virtual sessions on
this very issue of covering jails and police reform in January. For the fourth year, the tuition is
covered by a grant from our partners at the MacArthur Foundation. You can see the course
lineup, guest faculty, schedule and application here. Sign up right away to reserve a spot.
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From:charitynellums<nellumscharity@gmail.com>
Sent:Sunday,December13,20205:17PM
To:Eiserer,Tanya<teiserer@wfaa.com>
Subject:Re:

Thiswasawesome,andsoheartbreakingatthesametime.Itrulycan’tthankyouenough.You’vebeen
heavensenttoallofus.Thankyou

SentfrommyiPhone

From:KeriBlakinger<kblakinger@themarshallproject.org>
Sent:Sunday,December13,20206:02PM
To:Eiserer,Tanya<teiserer@wfaa.com>;Tsiaperas,Tasha<TTsiaperas@wfaa.com>;Trahan,Jason
<jptrahan@wfaa.com>;Autin,Sheena<sautin@wfaa.com>
Subject:fromalawyeriknow(obvsisaidyes)
Wow.Keri,thiskindofdocumentaryandinformationcouldbepowerfullypersuasivetothecourts
makingdecisionsonbondandcompassionaterelease.Maywesharethiswithjudgesandother
lawyers?

Pat

PatrickF.McCann
LawOfficesofPatrickF.McCann
700Louisiana,Ste3950
Houston,Texas77002
713Ͳ223Ͳ3805

'Tinderbox waiting for the
spark': WFAA investigation
shows how COVID-19
spread through Texas
prisons
A joint investigation with The Marshall Project exposes
how COVID-19 was allowed to spread due to a lackluster
response by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Authors: Keri Blakinger (The Marshall Project), Tanya Eiserer (WFAA)
On a spring day in North Texas, Russell Hill sat down to watch his friends play dominoes. As
they clacked the game pieces on the dayroom table, the men engaged in their usual pastime as
prisoners at the Hutchins Unit: Dreaming of life on the outside.
Then Hill piped up: “I’m cold.”
But it was hot in the Dallas prison, and the 60-year-old’s friends took notice.
“You might be sick,” Janarieo Dillihunt remembered telling him. Hill pointed out that he hadn’t
been anywhere – and besides, at that point in mid-April there were no known coronavirus cases
in the 2,300-man lock-up.
But Hill would become one of the first.
In the days that followed, the usually-fit former Marine stopped eating and drinking. He turned
pale and his friends said he barely moved from his bunk. Again and again, they tried to get him
help.
“That man dies, that's on you,” Dillihunt told one officer. “And he was like, ‘There’s nothing I
can do about it.’”
By the end of the week, Hill was dead.
The Texarkana man is one of at least 168 people who died of COVID-19 in the Texas prison
system, where the pandemic hit much harder than the rest of the state. By the start of October,
the infection rate there was 490% higher than Texas as a whole, and the death rate was more than
twice the national average. That’s partly because prisons are prime incubators for the disease, as
social distancing and basic contagion protections are largely impossible behind bars.
An investigation by WFAA and The Marshall Project showed that it’s also because the agency’s
lackluster response allowed the virus to spread, potentially exacerbating outbreaks and putting
surrounding communities at risk.
For this project, reporters reviewed dozens of policy documents, internal reports, and leaked
emails, along with hundreds of letters from prisoners and a handful of images and recordings
captured on contraband cell phones. Interviews with more than 110 staff, prisoners and their
family members found that:
• Prison employees reported being forced to share and reuse protective gear throughout the
pandemic and well into the fall, despite the fact that officials said they had enough
equipment on hand before the outbreaks began.
• The agency did not consistently isolate infected prisoners, or quarantine people long
enough – even after the executive director was warned their procedures might be
inadequate.
• At some units, prisoners said that instead of getting medical treatment they were put in
solitary confinement and given over-the-counter medication. Others said that staff
ignored requests for help, including those from men who later died.
• Even though the prison system locked down dozens of facilities to control outbreaks,
officials undermined containment efforts by transferring prisoners while they were sick
and forcing staff to fill in at infected units hours away.
• Staffing vacancies soared as hundreds of workers caught the virus at once or quit out of
concern for their own safety. At some particularly understaffed units, cellphone video
showed that prisoners began starting fires several times a day to get attention when they
said they weren't fed or allowed to call home.
Top prison officials declined to interview for this story, instead deferring comment to spokesman
Jeremy Desel.
“From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has
worked with one goal in mind: protecting the health and safety of the offenders in our care and
the employees and contractors who work for this agency,” Desel said in a video statement late
this year.
He said the prison system "remains diligent" in health and safety protocols, which have been
“key to continuing the downward trend that we're seeing of COVID inside our system.”
By early December, more than 33,000 staff and prisoners had caught the virus, and in addition to
the more than 100 prisoner fatalities, at least 26 staff members died after catching COVID-19.
The agency’s handling of the pandemic also sparked a lawsuit and three-week trial, and drew
harsh condemnation from union officials, outside experts and even a federal judge who
described conditions at one prison as “nothing short of a human tragedy.”
The lawsuit is still winding its way through the courts, but now with the next state legislative
session on the horizon, some advocates and elected officials are hoping to see more action from
lawmakers.
“The buck stops at the legislature,” said Rep. Gene Wu (D-Houston). “If the prisons are not
running correctly, if things are underfunded, that is our fault. And I fully take responsibility for
my share of the blame – and we're going to do something about it.”
‘Waiting for the spark’
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice was struggling long before COVID-19 breached the
walls. In recent years, the prison system grappled with inmate killings, employee arrests, natural
disasters, evidence-planting scandals, rising suicide numbers and a steady stream
of troubling lawsuits.
They were all warning signs of Texas-sized trouble: At the start of the year, TDCJ held roughly
141,000 prisoners in 106 facilities, more than any other state. With staff turnover rates hovering
around 30% and more than a third of officer jobs vacant at dozens of units, the hulking agency
was ill-equipped to deal with a new crisis.
As Scott Medlock, an Austin-based lawyer behind several high-profile lawsuits against the
agency, described it, the prison system was a “tinderbox waiting for the spark.”
That spark was the coronavirus.
When the disease first hit Texas in the beginning of March, the prison system did not yet have a
policy in place for handling a pandemic, and elected officials worried the agency wouldn’t act
promptly – or at all.
“My contacts said the prison system wasn’t going to do anything about it,” said Palestine Mayor
Steve Presley, whose rural East Texas community is home to five prisons. “They were not going
to do anything to stop the spread.”
When they created a written policy a few weeks later, it didn’t allow prisoners access to some
basic disease prevention measures like hand sanitizer. Officials said the product’s high alcohol
content would be a safety risk, even though men at one unit had jobs bottling the same product
they were banned from using.
As the pandemic progressed, the lack of access to sanitizer became particularly problematic
at prisons plagued by water outages, including the Smith Unit in Lamesa, where one officer told
WFAA and The Marshall Project she got in trouble for letting kitchen workers use hand sanitizer
when they couldn’t wash their hands due to plumbing problems. She said she later quit over
concerns for her own safety.
Even after the first cases began cropping up behind bars, prisoners, guards and – according to a
leaked April 1 email – most medical staff were banned from wearing masks. At the time, the
agency pointed out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t yet recommend
them for everyone.
But employees weren’t always sure if they’d end up in contact with positive cases, so some
officers tried bringing in their own face coverings but were threatened with write-ups, according
to union leader Cheri Siegelin.
“They were being told that they were going to face disciplinary issues for wearing masks to
protect themselves,” Siegelin said, “because their supervisors didn't want them to incite panic in
the offender population.”
Yet the prisoners were already concerned enough that on March 30 men at the Pack Unit, a
geriatric prison in Navasota, filed a class-action lawsuit. Represented by Medlock and a legal
team, the prisoners accused the agency of a “grossly inadequate” response that they said fell far
short of CDC guidelines.
The following week, the first prisoner died.
Around the same time, the agency started locking down units with active outbreaks and issuing
prison-made cloth masks to all employees. Even so, prisoners still appeared maskless in a
promotional video about their mask-making efforts.
Those masks could help stop the spread, but they wouldn’t work to protect the wearer. Some
employees grumbled about the agency’s apparent reluctance to distribute the 100,000 protective
N95 masks TDCJ officials said they had in storage. Several staffers raised similar concerns about
gloves and other equipment.
One officer said she had to share a plastic face shield with her partner when they escorted a sick
prisoner to an outside hospital.
But difficulties getting protective gear — which have continued into the fall and winter, as staff
report sharing and reusing gowns and masks — have felt all too familiar to some officers.
In 2017, mumps outbreaks ran through a handful of units in South Texas, and afterward,
lawmakers told the prison system to make sure they were prepared with gear and distribution
procedures the next time around.
Three years later, officers say they weren’t.

“Even though they’re saying there is, there’s not enough PPE out there,” Jeff Ormsby, the Texas
corrections leader of the American Federation State, County and Municipal Employees
union, said in the spring. “They're giving staff cloth masks. It’s embarrassing, is what it is.”
‘I hope I don’t get this stuff’
Before he fell sick, Russell Hill wasn’t the type to complain. His years in the Marines made him
disciplined and orderly – the sort of man whose family remembered him ironing his pockets and
underwear.
Yet he also had a spontaneous streak, and his long-time girlfriend Shirley Carrigan fondly
recalled going on aimless drives together at 2 a.m. when they had nothing better to do.
Not far from that spontaneity was a love of good times – and alcohol.
According to his girlfriend, Hill got into heavy drinking during his time in the service, while he
was stationed in Hawaii. After coming home to East Texas, records show he racked up a series
of mostly low-level arrests, as well as a drug charge that landed him in prison for two years in
the late 1990s. Then when he caught a felony drunk driving charge two decades later, he found
himself headed back to prison, this time for a seven-year sentence.
That’s the sort of sentence that can end a relationship, but Carrigan and Hill stayed together,
through letters and phone calls. And when he professed that he was a changed man and wanted
to get married, she said she’d consider it. Once he got out.
With another parole review coming up, it seemed possible that freedom might not be too far
away.
Even when the coronavirus hit Texas, Carrigan wasn’t worried. Because Hill was behind bars,
she thought he’d be safe.
“He never mentioned to me how bad it was up there,” she said. “He just was saying: ‘I hope I
don't get this stuff.’”
Questionable quarantines and community spread
Even before Hill started worrying about the virus, officials realized they needed more testing.
The agency’s medical director laid out plans to test 3,000 prisoners at five hard-hit units as early
as April 13, according to a leaked email obtained by WFAA and The Marshall Project.
But there’s no evidence that actually happened; one week after the swab tests were to be
administered, the TDCJ website still indicated less than 950 tests had been performed.
By early May, more than 70% of prisoners tested had confirmed cases of the virus, a positivity
rate so high that experts said it was indicative of a need for widespread testing behind bars.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t until May 12 – two months after Gov. Greg Abbott declared COVID-19 a
disaster – that the agency was able to make that happen, by sending “strike teams” to every unit
to oversee testing. The agency spokesman pointed out that was at least partly because it was
difficult to get enough tests in the early weeks of the pandemic.
When the state finally got them, the spokesman said, TDCJ was first in line.
The testing was a gargantuan effort, but its efficacy in mitigating the spread of disease may have
been undermined by the agency’s spotty quarantine and isolation procedures. Text messages
later cited by the Supreme Court showed that agency director Bryan Collier had been warned as
early as April that 14 days wasn’t necessarily enough time and their protocols were
“questionable at best.”
At some units, prisoners reported that officials lumped possibly exposed men in with those
who’d tested positive, didn’t retest sick people to confirm that they were no longer shedding the
virus, and sometimes sent positive cases back to regular housing just days after testing.
In late August, a series of leaked emails obtained by WFAA and The Marshall Project showed
that staff were instructed to move people still testing positive back into regular housing, as long
they’d completed their isolation period and were not symptomatic.
The prison spokesman defended the agency’s isolation protocols as “above and beyond” CDC
recommendations.
Even the agency’s critics acknowledge that better quarantine procedures may not have been
feasible in some units, simply because the prisons are not designed for it. Many rely on
dormitory-style housing where it is not possible to isolate sick people, so officials restricted men
to their dorms instead, a mitigation effort that presented its own problems.
At the Pack Unit, the men in the 30-person wheelchair dorms were responsible for doing their
own janitorial work. According to court testimony, at one point officials assigned a blind man in
a wheelchair to be a dorm janitor tasked with ensuring cleanliness during the pandemic. In court,
the unit’s assistant warden testified that he didn’t see a problem with that practice because a
disabled janitor “could put a broom against his neck and push it with a wheelchair.”
Despite those shortcomings, the agency did take some significant steps to stop the spread of
disease, cutting off outside visitors, shutting down most in-person programs and suspending new
prisoner intake from jails. But they continued transfers between prisons, a practice that some
elected officials feared would exacerbate outbreaks and increase the odds of the disease creeping
out into the community.
After political leaders in Palestine complained, TDCJ transferred more than 100 infected men
from two lock-ups in East Texas several hours away to prisons in Brazoria County, a move that
brought the sick men closer to the agency’s hospital in Galveston but also risked bringing the
disease to a different community.
“What they’re doing is just spreading it into our population,” Brazoria County Judge Matt
Sebesta said in April.
Though officials have said prisoner movement substantially decreased during the pandemic, it’s
unclear to what extent that happened and when, as the agency has fought requests for data on
transfers, citing the pending lawsuit as reason to withhold the information.
Recently, the spokesman defended the transfers to Brazoria, saying the agency followed “proper
protocols” for pandemic safety and that the moves didn’t spark an outbreak in local units.
‘As long as he’s breathing’
After Hill first caught a chill, his condition deteriorated quickly. By the next day, his friend
Dillihunt felt sick, too, so he wrote his wife to tell her they’d both fallen ill.
When the letter arrived, Dillihunt was already feeling better, but Hill was in bad shape,
shivering, coughing and refusing to eat. When a guard came by for count, Dillihunt flagged him
down. But as soon as the officer saw the pile-up of uneaten food in Hill’s cell, he accused him of
stealing sack lunches.
In the following days, Dillihunt said he repeatedly tried to warn officers how sick his friend was.
“He’s OK as long as he’s breathing,” he remembered one telling him.
It’s not clear exactly what happened when Hill finally got to the infirmary on April 14, but
there’s no indication he received a COVID-19 test before he went back to his dorm.
Then, just before midnight on April 16, records show Hill was sent back to the infirmary because
he couldn’t catch his breath. According to Dillihunt, the older man seemed to be delusional and
didn’t know where he was.
Finally, officials called 911 and took Hill to a hospital where doctors discovered his lungs and
kidney were failing. They put him on oxygen, and a scan found that his lungs had “groundglass
opacities,” a typical sign of COVID-19, according to hospital records.
Then he tested positive for the virus.
He died two days later.
Deteriorating conditions and desperate measures
As the disease spread, prisoners grew more desperate. By June, more than 6,500 had caught the
virus, staffing levels were the lowest in recent memory, a third of the prison system was on
lockdown, and conditions behind bars were continuing to deteriorate.
Repeatedly, prisoners reported receiving little medical treatment other than isolation and
temperature checks.
When prisoner Beatrice Vasquez tested positive at the Murray Unit in Gatesville, she said a
medical staffer just told her to take deep breaths every hour and drink water. “My temperature
was taken,” she wrote in a letter in May. “I was at 97 and they left. That’s it. I was given a small
pack of non-aspirins and nothing more.”
At the Beto Unit in Palestine, prisoners grew so desperate that records show one man who tested
positive jumped off the third floor of his unit and hanged himself rather than deal with the virus
in prison.
For some, it was not the virus but the lockdowns that led to desperate behavior. Just after
officials locked all the men down at the Clements Unit in Amarillo, one prisoner allegedly killed
his cellmate and hid the man’s body in his cell for several days before the guards realized what
had happened. At Briscoe Unit in South Texas, prisoners defeated the locking mechanisms and
slipped out of their cells to take a guard hostage.
At several units, men began starting fires on their housing pods multiple times per day in what
some described as an effort to attract attention from higher-ups when the officers assigned to
their units did not feed them or denied them access to things like phones and showers.
Sometimes, prisoners with contraband cell phones recorded the conflagrations as well as fights
and other signs of unrest, apparently recording the chaos freely without any intervention from the
overextended staff.
“The place is completely lawless and the guards, they come around every once in a while,” said
one prisoner, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “For the most part, you go
hours, literally eight, nine hours without seeing a guard.”
The prison spokesman disputed that account.
“There will always be some level of dissent in a prison environment but that has been very small
especially considering the pressures and uncertainty stemming from the pandemic,” Desel said.
By July, prison data showed the agency had more than 5,000 vacant corrections officer positions,
a vacancy rate of over 21%. On top of that, officials told inmate families in a conference call that
another 1,000 employees were out due to sickness and quarantine, and units were struggling to
fulfill basic functions like distributing mail. To make up the soaring vacancies, agency leaders
required staff to fill in at other units, including units with active coronavirus cases.
“That’s how I got it,” one Huntsville-area officer told WFAA and The Marshall Project. He
asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the record and feared
retaliation.
“I was put in an area that I did not know until probably 45 minutes to the end of my shift that had
confirmed cases of corona,” he added.
This year, the agency spokesman has repeatedly defended the practice of shuffling around staff
as necessary and said it did not contribute to the spread of the disease.
But several officers we spoke to for this investigation disagreed, including the Huntsville-area
officer who said his entire family got sick.
“My son has severe asthma,” the officer said. “When I brought it home to him, I sat up multiple
nights crying because I thought he was gonna die.”
‘Just a Number’
Russell Hill’s family did not suspect there was anything wrong until April 16, when his girlfriend
got a text message from the family of Janarieo Dillihunt — the man who’d been playing
dominoes next to Hill when he first caught chills.
“Hi Ms. Shirley,” the text read. “I just got a letter from my husband and he said Russell is sick
(he’s) just been laying around in bed. They’re on lockdown and my husband said the guards gave
it to the inmates and so I am calling (this) morning to speak with the warden or somebody to
have them check on him. So you may want to call up there too.”
Frantic, Carrigan said she phoned the prison but couldn’t get any answers. So she called Hill’s
brother and told him to try calling too. For three days, they called again and again. It wasn’t until
April 19 that they heard back – when Carrigan got a call from the hospital prison chaplain.
“I was just calling to let you know that Russell had passed,” she recalls him telling her. She said
he had to be wrong.
But he wasn’t.
She frantically called the rest of the Hill’s family, and they got in touch with the unit warden
who confirmed the bad news: He told them Russell Hill had died of pneumonia. He’d been in the
hospital for two whole days, and his family had never been notified.
“Next-of-kin are not generally notified of hospitalizations unless the inmate is in critical or grave
condition,” said Desel, the prison system’s spokesman. “There are situations when those
notifications cannot be made before an inmate dies.”
To Carrigan, that lack of communication is still baffling all these months later.
“I don't want to say they didn't care,” she said. “But I kind of feel like he’s just a number to
them.”
‘How did you deal with this?”
By some measures, the Texas prison system appears to be in a better place than it was a few
months ago.
According to TDCJ data, by mid-December the population was down and there were just over
1,700 prisoners with active infections – a little over half of what the agency was reporting at the
end of July.
Officials say they’ve distributed more than 1.1 million N95 and KN95 masks. And now, the
nation is readying for vaccine distribution that could mean an end is in sight.
But looking back, some see the high death toll as something that was avoidable.
“At the end of the day, the way TDCJ and any other state agencies will be measured is not just
how you reacted at first, but what did you do throughout the pandemic?” asked Rep. Wu, the
Houston legislator. “How did you deal with this?”
That is a question the courts are still grappling with. After a three-week trial over the summer,
the judge overseeing the Pack Unit lawsuit found that the agency’s response included only the
“most basic steps that TDCJ could have taken to prevent mass death within the prison walls on
an unimaginable scale.”
Though he sided with the prisoners in a scathing ruling, TDCJ appealed his decision and the case
is now awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. But even if the courts side
with the prisoners, that would only impact one of the state’s roughly 100 lock-ups. To some, it
seems the more lasting changes must come from state lawmakers.
“The solutions lie in the legislature going back and doing an in-depth study of everything that
has happened,” said Steve Presley, the Palestine mayor. “This is really a symptom of a problem
that’s gone on for decades with the prison system, of them feeling like they could do whatever
they want to do and they seem to be able to get away with doing that.”
For Shirley Carrigan, that sentiment may have a ring of truth to it. She was hoping to welcome
Hill home soon, optimistic that he would make parole this time around. Instead - on what should
have been his 61st birthday - his loved ones gathered at a park in Texarkana to reminisce about
the rabble-rousing former Marine and release blue balloons in his honor.
“He was supposed to be getting out,” Carrigan said. “But, you know, he never made it.”
TIMELINE: The spread of
COVID-19 in Texas prisons
Prisons are prime incubators for the disease, as social
distancing and basic contagion protections are largely
impossible behind bars.
Credit: WFAA
Author: Keri Blakinger (The Marshall Project)
Published: 4:30 PM CST December 13, 2020
In Texas prisons, more than 26,000 prisoners have caught COVID-19 since
the first confirmed case in March.
And at least 168 prisoners have died after catching the virus.
There have also been 7,340 coronavirus cases among prison staff and at
least 26 employee deaths. The surviving relatives of those prison employees
say they have been unable to get first-responder benefits.
By the fall, the Texas prison system led the nation in COVID-19 prisoner
deaths, according to a study from the University of Texas at Austin.
Prisons are prime incubators for the disease, as social distancing and basic
contagion protections are largely impossible behind bars.
An investigation by WFAA and The Marshall Project showed that the spread
of COVID-19 behind bars was also due to the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice's lackluster response, potentially exacerbating outbreaks and putting
Here's how the novel coronavirus has spread in Texas prisons:
Jan. 21 - The first case of COVID-19 is confirmed in the U.S.
Jan. 30 - The World Health Organization declares a public health emergency.
The first person-to-person transmission of the virus is confirmed in the U.S.
Feb. 26 - The Correctional Managed Health Care Committee, which oversees
healthcare in Texas prisons, has its first meeting to discuss planning and
response to COVID-19.
March 11 - The Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s chief health services
provider calls a meeting to discuss revamping the agency’s pandemic flu plan
to address COVID-19. It's the same day the WHO declares the coronavirus a
pandemic.
March 12 - TDCJ makes a video showing staff how to wear PPE. The agency
has since fought reporters’ requests to release that video or see what
instructions it provides.
March 13 - Gov. Greg Abbott declares a state of disaster, and Texas
prisons end all visitation.
March 16 - TDCJ activates its incident command center at headquarters in
Huntsville and begins holding daily conference calls to discuss the situation.
And, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stops the execution of John
Hummel due to the pandemic. It is the first of several executions called off due
to COVID-19.
March 20 - The Correctional Managed Health Care Committee issues its
first COVID-19 policy, greenlit by three joint medical directors but without input
from the agency’s security staff. The same day, the governor approves
TDCJ’s request to temporarily suspend the fees prisoners are usually charged
for medical treatment, allowing better access to medical care during the
pandemic.
March 23 - A contract prison employee working at the Jester 1 Unit in
Richmond becomes the first staff member to test positive for COVID-19. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases interim guidance
on managing COVID-19 in jails and detention centers, outlining when facilities
need soap, sanitizer, PPE, and social distancing.
Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Prison factories begin making masks for staff and inmates.
March 24 - Prison factories begin making masks for staff and inmates,
distributing them to elderly inmates to start. The agency also
begins minimizing prisoner transfers between units. The same day, TDCJ
announces the first prisoner - a 37-year-old at Lychner State Jail - has tested
positive for the virus.
March 30 - Medically vulnerable inmates at the Pack Unit, a geriatric prison in
East Texas, sue TDCJ to demand better access to soap, hand sanitizer and
social distancing.
April 5 - After several weeks of banning them, the agency reverses course
and begins requiring masks for staff. The first 50,000 prisoner-made cotton
masks are distributed.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Kevin Wilcher was the first Texas prison employee to die from COVID-19.
April 6 - Kevin Wilcher, a 49-year-old officer at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville,

becomes the first staff member to die from the virus.
April 7 - Bartolo Infante, a 72-year-old at the Telford Unit, becomes the first
prisoner to die of COVID-19 after spending four days in an outside hospital
battling viral pneumonia. The same day, four prisons — Murray, Jordan, Beto
and Telford — go on lockdown due to viral outbreaks at the units.
April 10 - The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases among prisoners
crosses into triple-digits with 132 inmates testing positive. Eighteen prisons
are on lockdown. During lockdowns, the agency says only staff assigned to
each unit will work at those units.
April 11 - The geriatric Pack Unit in Navasota sees its first COVID-19-related
fatality when Leonard Clerkly dies. His cause of death is not confirmed for two
more days. Two days later, the prison system suspends intakes from county
jails.
A State-by-State Look at Coronavirus in Prisons
Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice and immigration. Since March, The Marshall Project has been
tracking how many people are being sickened and killed by COVID-19 in prisons and how widely it has spread across
the country and within each state.
The Marshall Project |May 01, 2020
April 16 - Federal District Judge Keith Ellison issues a preliminary

injunction in the Pack prisoners’ lawsuit, ordering the prison system to provide
hand sanitizer and face masks for inmates. TDCJ appeals the order the next
day.
April 18 - The prison system changes how it tracks positive cases, now noting
only where the prisoners are currently located and making it more difficult to
track outbreaks. So far, 18 have recovered and 376 have tested positive as
well as 183 staff.
April 19 - Prisoner Russell Hill dies of COVID-19, though the prison system
does not publicly acknowledge his death for five more months.
Russell Hill, a former Marine, died of COVID-19 while in prison. His family wasn't immediately
notified.
April 22 - The Fifth Circuit stays Judge Ellison’s order, saying that TDCJ does
not have to comply with it while the court considers the agency’s appeal.
April 29 - The number of infected prisoners crosses the 1,000 mark, with
1,050 positives among the inmate population and 381 among the staff. TDCJ
notes 12 prisoner and 5 staff deaths in connection with the virus. Thirty-seven
units are on lockdown, sparking complaints from prisoners who cannot call
their families and are subsisting on shoddy bagged meals.
Credit: Prisoner photos sent to Keri Blakinger
An example of the sack meals given to prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic.
May 12 - The prison system deploys “strike teams” and begins mass
testing the inmate population, including prisoners who are asymptomatic.
May 15 - Prison officials promise to improve the food served during lock-term
lockdowns, ordering fresh vegetables and tray lids to deliver hot meals.
May 17 - Prisoners and staff continue reporting deteriorating conditions at
several units, including the Smith Unit in Lamesa where staff say a sewer line
problem causes toilets to overflow with feces after a water outage.
First Came The Pandemic, Then Came the Raw Sewage
Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice and immigration. The toilets are overflowing-again. As if
crowded conditions inside prisons were not enough of a challenge during a pandemic, some Texas prisoners are also
facing a familiar foe: the system's historically-bad plumbing.
The Marshall Project |May 30, 2020
May 29 - Strike teams have tested more than 51,000 prisoners and nearly
14,000 staff members using Curative oral swabs. So far, 5,469 prisoners and
879 staff have tested positive, and 36 prisoners and seven employees have
died from the virus.
June 5 - The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacates the court’s preliminary
injunction because TDCJ “substantially complied with the measures ordered
by the district court” and they remanded the case to the district court.
June 10 - By now, more than 1,000 prison staff and 7,200 inmates have
confirmed positives, and 59% of the state's 106 units are on lockdown. Staff
report they are routinely being forced to work at other units, even during
lockdowns. Some say they have been written up for refusing.
June 15 - In an effort to stop delaying releases, officials announced that they
will resume the transfer of prisoners who need to be moved to other units to
complete programs needed to make parole.
June 30 - After a monthslong pause on intakes, the prison population drops
under 130,000 for the first time in decades, closing out the month
with 126,590 behind bars. But the agency resumes picking up new
prisoners from county jails in July, starting with just 250 per week.
July 2 - Abbott issues a statewide executive order requiring facemasks in
counties with 20 or more positive cases.
July 8 - Texas carries out the first execution since the start of the pandemic,
putting to death 45-year-old Billy Wardlow.
July 13 - By this point, the agency has reported 12,007 cases and 94 deaths
among the prisoner population, and 2,160 cases including nine deaths among
the prison system’s employees. The trial begins in the case of the Pack Unit
prisoners who sued TDCJ to demand social distancing, hand sanitizer, soap
and other protections.
July 18 - Prisoners at the understaffed Briscoe Unit riot and take a corrections
officer hostage for several hours after breaking out of their cells amid a
lengthy lockdown.
Credit: WFAA
Aug. 24 - Despite the attempts at decreased transfers due to the pandemic,

TDCJ is forced to evacuate three units in southeast Texas in preparation for
incoming Hurricane Laura.
Sept. 29 - The Pack Unit prisoners win their lawsuit, as Judge Keith Ellison
issues an expansive ruling in their favor, laying out a long list of requirements
TDCJ must comply with to better protect inmates.
Sept. 30 - The prison population dips to barely 120,000 for the first time in at
least two decades, and TDCJ closes three units - Garza East, Jester 1, and
Bradshaw. Another 3,379 beds in wings at other units across the state are
temporarily shut down due to a lack of staff.
Credit: The Marshall Project

An example of cloth masks worn by prisoners in Texas.
Oct. 13 - The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturns Judge Ellison’s order,
saying that the number of positive cases decreased without a court order. The
Pack Unit prisoners later appeal the decision.
Oct. 29 - The number of active prisoner cases dips down to 251, and agency
data lists 22,141 inmates as recovered. More than 218,000 incarcerated
people have been tested and 166 are believed to have died in connection with
the virus. There are 648 active staff cases, in addition to 21 deaths and 4,786
recoveries.
Oct. 30 - At a Texas Board of Criminal Justice meeting, Executive Director
Bryan Collier announces that wardens will oversee surveillance testing at
each unit every three weeks beginning Nov. 8.
Nov. 16 - The Supreme Court declines to intervene and enforce the district
court's injunction in the Pack Unit lawsuit, which would have required certain
basic safety procedures.
Dec. 1 - Texas prison officials confirmed plans to shut down two more prisons
following a massive population decrease during the pandemic. The goal is to
have the prisons closed by the end of the year.
Dec. 2 - Kenneth Russell died of COVID-19 two weeks after he was
hospitalized, prison officials said. He is one of 25 TDCJ employees who have
died from coronavirus complications.
No Way Out: Prisoners are
setting fires to protest
pandemic conditions
The Marshall Project and WFAA’s review of state records
found that the prison system has failed to correct basic
problems with non-functioning smoke and fire alarms.
Volume 60%

As the virus spread, the prisoners grew desperate. They couldn’t see their
families, many couldn’t leave their cells, thousands couldn’t get anything to
eat but bad rations. Some tried contacting advocacy groups. Some tried filing
grievances.
Some tried starting fires.
Dozens of videos taken inside Texas prisons over the course of the pandemic
show crackling blazes outside of cells, in stairwells, and in housing areas.
Prisoners set these fires, often saying that they hope to attract the attention of
officials who might address whatever problems the overextended guards
aren’t tending to, including poor food, dirty clothes, or no access to showers.
The conflagrations don’t always have the intended effect; in fact, prison
officials find them easy to ignore. That’s because more than 200 Texas prison
buildings do not have working fire alarm systems.
The Marshall Project and WFAA’s review of state records found that the
prison system has flouted fire-safety officials for at least a decade, every year
failing to correct the same basic problems with non-functioning smoke and fire
alarms and unsafe wiring.
Many prison kitchens do not have adequate fire suppression systems, and
some units have electrical wiring that is a hodge-podge of extension cords,
according to records from the State Fire Marshal’s Office.
The office has been flagging serious problems since at least 2012, when it
noted that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has “had a long history of
noncompliance” with fire-safety standards. Last year’s annual inspection
report found 2,925 safety violations in the prison system, which corrected only
167 of them, or less than 6 %.
Coronavirus Restrictions Stoke Tensions in Lock-ups Across U.S.
Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice and immigration. In the grainy cell phone video, the prison
block is dim and the shouting muffled-but the sight of wafting, gray smoke is unmistakable.
The Marshall Project |Apr 02, 2020
The current situation is extremely dangerous for prisoners and prison staff,
said Carlee Purdum, a Texas A&M University professor who studies disasters
and mass incarceration.
“Incarcerated persons can’t protect themselves,” she said. “So when you
combine the risks of Covid-19 and a situation where there’s not adequate
safety infrastructure in place, you have a recipe for a disaster. Just crossing
your fingers and hoping a fire doesn’t happen isn’t good enough.”
A spokesman for the prison system, Jeremy Desel, said it “is aware of the
State Fire Marshal’s report” and has been requesting money to upgrade fire
safety systems for years.
“The agency has processes in place to mitigate issues identified in their
report,” he said.
Even without a pandemic, prisoners sometimes start fires. They aren’t allowed
to have lighters or matches, so some cobble together metal to make jailhouse
fire-starters known as “stingers.”
Others stick razors and graphite pencils in electrical outlets to create sparks—
a simple process one prisoner demonstrated in a video chat with a reporter
earlier this year. They use the sparks to light a piece of paper or cloth, then
toss the growing fire out their cell’s food slot to burn in walkways and common
areas.
Sometimes, incarcerated people start fires in the midst of a mental health
crisis or after taking smuggled-in drugs like K2. But staff and prisoners say
that often the fires are a tactic to summon help and draw supervisors down to
the cells.
That’s what one prisoner said was happening in a video taken in late March
inside a Texas prison. Grainy images showed smoke wafting across the
cellblock, where men shouted in the dark.
“It’s a nonviolent protest going on right now because the officers, in the middle
of the coronavirus, have refused us electricity for several hours, no showers or
anything,” a male voice says in the recording. In the video, the officers did not
appear to react or notice the blaze.
A prison spokesman said at the time that he had no record of the incident or
its resolution.
In the months since, prisoners and staff across the state have shared
accounts, videos and pictures documenting fights, drug use, fires, and other
unrest, particularly in some of the state’s toughest, most understaffed units. In
some clips reviewed by reporters at The Marshall Project and WFAA, men in
a smoke-filled unit screamed, “We can’t breathe! We can’t breathe!” after staff
members did not respond to fires that smoldered for hours, prisoners said.
Other video taken a few days later showed the red glow of flames from a tier
of cells below. “That’s a fire,” a male voice says. “They’re not trying to put it
out or nothing.”
The Marshall Project and WFAA are not naming the prisons because the
prisoners fear retaliation from corrections officials. The joint investigation has
taken steps to confirm the incidents shown in the fire videos through
interviews with prisoners and prison staff.
A prison staffer who requested anonymity for the same reason said officers
sometimes are slow to respond to flames or reluctant to use fire extinguishers
because there aren’t enough staff and they want to avoid the hassle of
documenting incidents.
Corrections officers “only have to report them if they use the firehose or
extinguisher, so they use the water coolers to put the fires out,” the staffer
said. “It’s becoming a daily occurrence.”
One prisoner said sometimes the flames continued unabated for hours, while
men at other units reported separate fires two or three times a day. Though
the agency’s internal emergency reports show fewer than 15 fires a month
total at all of the state’s approximately 100 lock-ups, prisoners and staff say
that’s a significant undercount. The agency spokesman said those figures do
not include an additional 103 fires prisoners set in their cells.
“All fires are responded to, extinguished, and investigated,” he added.
While none of the fires started since March appear to have resulted in any
deaths or substantial damage, blazes at prisons have caused major problems
as recently as 2015, when prisoners at a federal facility in South Texas set
fires that left the complex uninhabitable.
Yearly reports published by the State Fire Marshal’s Office show that, unlike
many of the state-run buildings the office inspects, the Texas prison system
has failed to correct basic problems despite repeated warnings.
In 2012, the agency reported that 400 of the prison system’s facilities needed
fire alarms, but 233 didn’t have them. Some prison officials had put in work
orders to get problems fixed, but the fire marshal noted that those orders were
often more than a decade old and the work hadn’t been done.
Reports from the next three years detailed almost identical concerns, with no
apparent progress toward fixing them.
In 2016, the list of hazards grew when fire officials noted that not only were
existing problems not fixed, but also in some cases prison staff had marked
the work as done when it wasn’t.
As a stopgap measure, the corrections agency said it would rely on a fire
watch system, where prisoners or staffers are assigned guard duties to look
out for fires. That practice was more common before the invention of smoke
alarms but is now typically used as a temporary measure when a building’s
sprinklers or fire alarms are broken.
In 2019 the fire marshal observed the corrections agency wasn’t following its
fire watch policies.
By that point, the agency still hadn’t fixed the fire alarms, and records reveal
additional problems had cropped up, such as extension cords used as
permanent wiring and kitchens with inadequate fire suppression systems.
At most units, gas pipelines weren’t regularly getting tested and neither were
fire doors. Like the prisons, many housing units for employees lacked
functioning smoke alarms.
The fire marshal’s office “has asked for correction timelines but has received
none,” according to its 2019 report. This year’s report hasn’t been released
yet, and inspectors have not been able to visit prisons since March because of
the pandemic.
A spokesman for the marshal’s office, Ben Gonzalez, said that by law the fire
marshal has some enforcement ability, but usually tries to get government
agencies to fix problems using available resources. “The goal is to get
problems corrected,” he said. “When it’s not possible to do that quickly, we
work with agencies on temporary measures they can put in place to reduce
the risks.”
In the case of the Texas prison system, that hasn’t done much good. The fire
alarms are still broken — and prisoners are still setting fires.
“It’s a system that’s just basically given up and is unwilling to deal with the
problems it has,” said Texas House Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat from
Houston.
The fire videos “speak a lot to just how broken I think our prison system is in
the state,” he added. “It looks like a system that is underfunded, understaffed
and doesn’t necessarily see prisoners or even corrections officers as human
beings anymore.”
No Way Out: How the Texas
prison system tracks
COVID-19 cases, deaths
A joint WFAA and The Marshall Project investigation
showed the prison system's data on COVID-19 deaths and
case numbers come with some caveats and limitations.
Credit: WFAA
Early on in the pandemic, the Texas prison system began publishing detailed
data tracking the spread of COVID-19 behind bars, first with a color-coded
chart and later with an interactive map.
The figures from those sites are what The Marshall Project and WFAA relied
on for a joint investigation into the prison system’s handling of health and
safety procedures. The reporting showed the data have several important
caveats and limitations when it comes to death figures, positive case numbers
and the locations of sick prisoners.
Here’s a short breakdown:
Death data
There have been significant delays in the reporting of COVID-19-related

prisoner deaths, so the approximately 170 noted on the website as of early
December are likely an undercount. Sometimes the agency has waited to post
deaths for several months — as was the case with Russell Hill, who was
featured in the investigation — and sometimes officials have posted them
immediately. This makes it difficult to estimate how delayed the reporting may
be.
Officials at times have deleted some COVID-19-related deaths from their
count. Some of those deletions were later restored while others were not.
TDCJ said at the time that it was not their decision to delete names from the
tally and that the two university medical providers made that decision — but
both medical providers said that was not the case.
Here is what the Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson
says about the prison system's response to the coronavirus pandemic:
Positive caseloads
In the spring, tests sometimes took two weeks to come back, so early
positivity figures showed some delay and did not always include
asymptomatic “surveillance” testing. Additionally, lawyers representing the
prisoners who sued TDCJ over the handling of COVID-19 raised questions
about the reliability of the number of positive cases reported to the
public, which they said sometimes conflicted with the number reported to the
courts.
As case numbers rose over the course of the pandemic, a prison spokesman
said that the high number of confirmed cases was actually the result of the
agency’s proactive mass testing and that many of those cases were
asymptomatic, an explanation that does not account for the high death toll.
Recovered cases
The Texas prison website lists the number of prisoners who have recovered
from the disease, and during a trial, the agency pointed to that number as
evidence that their disease mitigation efforts were successful.
Attorneys for the Pack Unit prisoners who sued the agency called into
question the definition of “recovered,” providing evidence in court that some
symptomatic prisoners may have been prematurely counted as recovered.
“TDCJ’s self-reporting of ‘recovered’ means nothing more than that an inmate
is still alive after 14 days,” the lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
Location of cases
Initially, when the agency started noting the number of positive cases at each
unit, they listed the figures based on what unit prisoners were housed when
they first tested positive.
In the spring, officials switched approaches and began providing data based
on where prisoners are currently housed, a change that makes it more difficult
to study the source of outbreaks but easier to determine the location of current
hotspots.
Symptomatic figures
The website does not outline the number of positive cases that are believed to
be asymptomatic versus the number believed to be symptomatic. According to
Executive Director Bryan Collier, roughly 75% of positive cases may be
asymptomatic. The investigation's reporting found some prisoners may try to
hide their symptoms to avoid the possibility of being put into solitary
confinement for isolation purposes.
No Way Out: Here are the
Texas prisoners who died of
COVID-19
Credit: WFAA
Author: Tanya Eiserer
Updated: 4:30 PM CST December 13, 2020
Daniel Campos always worried about his mother catching COVID-19 during
her work at a funeral home.
"Mom, you wear your mask," Patricia "Pat' Campos recalls her son telling her.
Campos said her son would remind her to be careful and wash her hands.
In the end, Daniel Campos was the one who contracted the virus.
"He was the one who got it in prison. I wasn't able to tell him goodby," Patricia
Campos said.
Daniel Campos is one of at least 168 people who died of COVID-19 in the
Texas prison system, where the pandemic hit much harder than the rest of the
state.
Credit: Trevino Funeral Home

Daniel Campos
Social distancing and other contagion protocols are difficult behind bars, but
an investigation by WFAA and The Marshall Project showed that the spread of
COVID-19 behind bars was also due to the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice's lackluster response, potentially exacerbating outbreaks and putting
The agency's website lists the prisoners who have died from the virus. Below
is a list of those people, including Campos.
Among the list are four people who officials removed from the agency's official
county of coronavirus-related deaths, even though they had tested positive for
the disease. Those four are: Nichole Perez, Floyd Thomas Scott, Matthew
Clayton Pouncey and Elias Villanueva, Jr.
According to a study from the University of Texas at Austin, 21 people who
died from the virus while incarcerated had served 90% or more of their
sentence. And nine people had been approved for parole but died before they
could be released.
One man — Alfredo De La Vega — died 12 days before he was scheduled to
be released.
Beto Unit
James Matthews, 68, died April 13, 2020, after being found unresponsive in
his cell. Prison officials tested him for COVID-19 on April 9 after he began
showing symptoms of the virus. Preliminary autopsy results suggest the
virus was a contributing cause of death. Matthews had served 17 years of a
40-year sentence out of Hopkins County.
Jeffrey Davis, 45, died May 11, 2020, in Tyler. Davis tested positive for
COVID-19 on April 14 and was placed on medical isolation. He suffered from
pre-existing medical conditions. On May 2, he was taken to a hospital in
Tyler. Preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a possible cause of
death. Davis had served three years of a 15-year sentence out of Galveston
County.
Byrd Unit
Stanley Leon Blackwell, 52, died May 3, 2020, at a hospital in Huntsville. He

was transported from the Byrd Unit in Huntsville on April 7. Blackwell tested
positive for COVID-19 on April 18. Final autopsy results indicate that in
addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a
contributing factor in his death. He had served six months on a life sentence
out of Tarrant County.
Carole Young Unit
Annie Mae Smith, 77, died July 29, 2020, at the Carole Young Unit in
Dickinson, where she was assigned. Smith tested positive for COVID-19.
Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number of pre-
existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in her
death. Smith had served 23 years on a life sentence out of Harris County.
Bobby Neil Anderson, 70, died July 31, 2020, at a hospital in Texas City.
Anderson tested positive for COVID-19 on July 17. He was transported on
July 23 from the unit. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that COVID-19 was
a contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly all of his sentence out
of Bee County.
Nichole Perez, 48, died Aug. 3, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. She was
transported on July 26 from the unit. Perez tested positive for COVID-19 on
July 27. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in her death. She had served three years
of a seven-year sentence out of Medina County. Perez was born in Hondo,
Texas, and is survived by her three sons and a daughter, according to her
obituary.
Credit: Hondo Funeral Home

Nichole Perez
Deborah Lynn Pieringer, 67, died Aug. 19, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Pieringer tested positive for COVID-19 on July 23. She was transported on
July 29 from the unit. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in her death. She had
served 18 years on a life sentence out of Tarrant County.
John Daniel Evans, 70, died July 16, 2020, at a hospital in Texas City. He
was transported on July 13 from the Carole Young Facility in Dickinson and
tested positive for COVID-19 on July 16. Final autopsy results indicate that in
addition to pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was the immediate
cause of his death. Evans had served 24 years on a life sentence out of Harris
County.
William O’Briant, 75, died Oct. 11, 2020, at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville. He
tested positive on Aug. 2 and was taken on Sept. 18 from the Carole Young
facility in Dickinson. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served
seven years on an 11-year sentence out of Wood County. According to his
obituary, he was known as “Poppy” to his family and is survived by his
daughter.
Clements Unit
Terry Jackson, 57, died May 2, 2020, at Northwest Texas Hospital. He was
transported on April 25 from the unit. Jackson suffered from pre-existing
medical conditions. Preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a
contributing cause of death. Jackson had served 14 years of a 45-year
sentence out of Lamar County.
Ramchand Jagaroo, 66, died May 3, 2020, at Northwest Texas Hospital. He
was transported on April 26 from the Clements Unit. Preliminary autopsy
results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. He had pre-existing
conditions. Jagaroo had served 16 years of a life sentence out of Harris
County.
Mario Olvera-Vasquez, 75, died May 12, 2020, at a hospital in Amarillo. He
tested positive for COVID-19 on April 16 and was taken that day to a hospital.
Final autopsy results indicate that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served five years on multiple 12-year sentences out of
McLennan County. According to his obituary, he was born in Mexico and
enjoyed singing and playing the guitar. He is survived by his wife and children.
Jose Martinez, 67, died May 15, 2020, at a hospital. He was transported on
April 18 from the Clements Unit in Amarillo. He had pre-existing medical
conditions. Preliminary autopsy results suggest COVID-19 as a possible
cause of death. Martinez had served 23 years of a life sentence out of
Hockley County.
Rafael Cruz, 76, died May 25, 2020, at a hospital in Amarillo. He was
transported on May 18 from the unit after testing positive on April 27. Final
autopsy results indicate that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death.
He had served over nine years on an 18-year sentence out of Brazos
County.
Coffield Unit
Carl Malone, 59, died July 16, 2020, at a hospital in Palestine. He tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 2 and was transported on July 11. There was
no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests COVID-19 was a
contributing factor in his death. He had served 36 years on a life sentence out
of Harris County.
Ignacia Saucedo Garcia, 60, died July 23, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Garcia tested positive July 6 and was transported from the unit on July 12.
existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death.
He had served one year on a 25-year sentence out of Dallas County.
Miguel Angel Duarte, 63, died July 23, 2020, at a hospital in Tyler. He tested
positive on July 2 and was transported on July 15 from the Coffield Unit in
Tennessee Colony. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a
number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing
factor in his death. He had served 34 years on a life sentence out of Harris
County.
Ray Charles Walker, 53, died July 26, 2020, at a hospital in Palestine. He
was transported on July 24 from the Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony.
Walker tested positive for COVID-19 on July 26. Preliminary autopsy results
indicate that in addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions,
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served over nine
years on multiple 20-year and 25-year sentences out of Bowie County.
Tommy Lee Freeman, 67, died Aug. 8, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
tested positive on July 22 and was transported from the Coffield Unit in
Tennessee Colony. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
over 34 years on a life sentence out of Limestone County.
Roderrick Leray Scott, 49, died July 21, 2020, at the Coffield Unit in
Tennessee Colony. Scott tested positive for COVID-19 on July 14. Final
autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number of pre-existing medical
conditions, COVID-19 was the immediate cause of his death. He had served
over eight years on a 10-year sentence out of Cooke County. Scott was born
in Gainesville and is survived by his four children, according to his obituary.
Cole Unit
Fernando Garcia, 59, died July 30, 2020, at a Paris hospital. Garcia tested
positive for COVID-19 on July 3. He was transported on July 7 from the Cole
Unit in Bonham. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
suggests COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served
over eight years on three stacked life sentences out of Dallas County.
Cotulla Unit
Jose Garza, 67, died July 31, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on July 1 from the Cotulla Unit in Cotulla and tested positive the
same day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly 15
years on a 60-year sentence out of DeWitt County.
Jacinto Salinse Cortez, 70, died Aug. 5, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on July 13 from the Cotulla Unit in Cotulla and tested positive
for COVID-19 the same day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He
had served over 13 years on a 50-year sentence out of Tarrant
County. According to his obituary, Cortez worked as a machine operator and
had a passion for carpentry, machinery and his family. He is survived by
his wife and children.
Rolston Lockett, 52, died Aug. 20, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Lockett
tested positive for COVID-19 on July 8 and was transported from the unit the
next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests
that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served 11 years
on a 20-year sentence out of Bowie County. According to his obituary, Lockett
was known to those that loved him as “T-Bone.” He worked as a mechanic
and coached youth league baseball and football. He is survived by his wife
and children.
Credit: Jones Stuart Mortuary
Rolston Lockett
Crain Unit
Gloria Proo, 55, died Sept. 11, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. She was
transported on Aug. 29 from the Crain Unit in Gatesville and tested positive
the same day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in her death. She had
served three years on an 88-year sentence out of Bexar County.
Daniel Unit
Matthew Clayton Pouncey, 58, died Aug. 29, 2020, at a Lubbock

hospital. Pouncey tested positive for COVID-19 on July 30. He was
transported from the Daniel Unit in Snyder and then from the Montford Unit in
Lubbock on Aug. 29. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
nearly three years on a five-year sentence out of Dallas County.
Dominguez Unit
Paul Alexander Casiano, 51, died June 27, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on June 23 from the Dominguez Unit in San Antonio. There
was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19
was a contributing factor in his death. He had served one year on a six-year
sentence out of Kendall County.
Justin McKinley, 58, died July 26, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. McKinley
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 25. He was transported on July 5 from
the Dominguez Unit in San Antonio. There was no autopsy conducted, but
medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served two years on a 10-year sentence out of Travis County.
Duncan Unit
Antonio Fernandez Ayala, 79, died June 4, 2020, at Hospital

Galveston. Ayala tested positive for COVID-19 on June 1 and was transported
from the unit that day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
nearly three years on a 15-year sentence out of Johnson County. His obituary
said he had 29 grandkids and 40 great-grandkids and "many loved nieces and
nephews."
David Erasmo Garcia, 83, died June 7, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Garcia
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 1 and was transported the next day to
Hospital Galveston. There was no autopsy conducted, but evidence suggests
that COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He had served 25 years of
a 30-year sentence for murder out of Dimmit County.
George Bond, 79, died June 9, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Duncan Unit. Bond tested positive for COVID-19 and
suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. No autopsy was performed.
Bond had served two years of a 15-year sentence out of Titus County.
Florencio Zarate Salas, 62, died June 12, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Salas
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5, 2020. He was transported on June 10
from the Duncan Unit in Diboll to Hospital Galveston. Preliminary autopsy
results suggest that COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He had
served 11 years of a 15-year sentence out of Hidalgo County.
Gerald Earl Gilbert, 69, died June 15, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on June 5 from the Duncan Unit in Diboll to a hospital and tested
positive for the virus the next day. He was transported on June 10 to Hospital
Galveston. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests
COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He had served nearly 17 years
of a 20-year sentence out of Harris County.
Frankie Randall, 63, died June 15, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Randall
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 8. He was transported on June 10 from
the Duncan Unit in Diboll. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served 14 years and nine months on a 25-year sentence out of Dallas
County.
David Turner, 67, died June 16, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Turner tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 5 and was transported on June 14 from the
Duncan Unit in Diboll. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
three years and six months on a 25-year sentence out of Comal County.
Daniel Perez Martinez, 71, died June 16, 2020, at a hospital. Martinez tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 8 and was transported from the unit the next
day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number of pre-
He had served 10 years on a 25-year sentence out of Harris County.
Henry Daniel Farr, 71, died June 18, 2020, at the Duncan Unit in Diboll. Farr
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served nearly 18 years of a 20-year sentence out of Harris
County.
James Lee Price, 71, died June 24, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on June 6 from the Duncan Unit in Diboll and tested positive for
the virus the next day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a
number of pre-existing conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing cause in his
death. He had served two years on a seven-year sentence out of Tarrant
County.
Baldemar Deleon, Jr., 70, died June 25, 2020, at a local hospital
in Jacksonville. Deleon tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5 and was
transported from the unit the next day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate
that in addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was
a contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly 14 years on a 50-year
sentence out of Collin County.
Alvin Murray, 71, died June 28, 2020, at a local hospital in Tyler. Murray
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 8. He was transported June 12 from the
unit. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served over three
years on a 20-year sentence out of Houston County. According to his
obituary, he was a self-taught musician who played the fiddle and the guitar.
He worked in the oilfields and later ran a successful hay business. He is
survived by his three children.
Gilbert Gomez, 73, died June 29, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
the virus the next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served over nine years on a 25-year sentence out of Harris
County. According to his obituary, Gomez was a South Houston resident who
is survived by his son, according to his obituary.
Credit: Morales Funeral Home

Gilbert Gomez
Jose Faide Morones, 70, died June 29, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Morones tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5 and was transported on
June 9 from the unit. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
nearly 15 years on a 25-year sentence out of Harris County.
Jimmy Ray Price, 82, died July 6, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
the virus the next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served nearly 24 years on a 25-year sentence out of Panola County.
Juan Torres, 67, died July 6, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
the novel coronavirus the next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served over 17 years on a 20-year sentence out of Bexar
County.
Ambrosio Salinas, 79, died July 10, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Salinas
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5. He was transported on June 14 from
the Duncan Unit in Diboll. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served nearly 16 years on a 25-year sentence out of Nueces County.
Hugo Martinez, 67, died July 13, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Martinez
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5. He was transported on June 21.
He had served 15 years on a 20-year sentence out of Guadalupe County.
Floyd Thomas Scott, 77, died July 14, 2020, at a Tyler hospital. Scott tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 5. He was transported on June 5. Preliminary
conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served 21
years on a 35-year sentence out of Polk County.
Albino Rodriguez Martinez, 68, died Aug. 22, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Martinez tested positive for COVID-19 on June 21. He was transported July
25 from the Duncan Unit in Diboll. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served over eight years on a 21-year sentence out of Pecos
County.
East Texas Treatment Facility
Clifford Danny Wright, 49, died Sept. 7, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on Sept. 1 from the East Texas Treatment Facility in Henderson.
Wright tested positive for COVID-19 on Sept. 7. There was no autopsy
conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing
factor in his death. He had served nine months on a probation term out of
Grayson County.
Eastham Unit
Danilo Garza, 65, died May 4, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 28 from the Eastham Unit. Garza tested positive for
COVID-19. His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death.
Michael Shane Brown, 59, died May 14, 2020, at a hospital in Tyler. He was
transported on May 3 and tested positive for the virus the next day. There was
no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests COVID-19 was a
contributing cause of death. He had served 24 years of a 30-year sentence
out of Harris County.
Ellis Unit
James Powers, 77, died May 10, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 5 from the Ellis Unit. Powers tested positive for COVID-19
and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. His family declined an
autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a contributing cause of his death.
Powers had served nine years of a 20-year sentence out of Taylor
County. According to his obituary, the Abilene resident served in the Army,
worked in the oilfield, and “often told stories about building hotrods with his
friends and brothers when he was a teenager.” He is survived by his two
children.
Credit: Hamil Funeral Home

James Powers
Estelle Unit
Darrin Houston, 55, died April 18, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Estelle Unit on April 14. He tested positive for COVID-19
and preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of
death. Houston had served 10 years of a life sentence out of Dallas County.
Nicholas Paredez, 82, died April 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Estelle Unit to a local hospital on April 22 and then
transported to Hospital Galveston on April 23. Paredez suffered from pre-
existing medical conditions and preliminary autopsy results suggest
pneumonia due to COVID-19 as a contributing cause of death. Paredez had
served 16 years of a 25-year sentence.
David Randle, 57, died April 26, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Estelle Unit on April 17 and then Hospital Galveston on
April 18. Randle tested positive for COVID-19. Preliminary autopsy results
suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Randle had served 15
years of a 60-year sentence out of Brown County. According to his obituary,
he was known as “Heavy D” and is survived by his son.
Credit: Dove Funeral Home

David Randle
Vidal Zaragoza, 68, died April 28, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Estelle Unit in Huntsville on April 23, 2020. Zaragoza
tested positive for COVID-19 on April 21. There was no autopsy conducted,
but medical evidence suggests COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death.
He had served 14 years of a 17-year sentence out of Harris County.
Eleazar Avila-Guerrero, 73, died May 5, 2020, at a hospital in Huntsville.
Avila-Guerrero tested positive for COVID-19 on April 27. He was transported
from the Estelle Unit in Huntsville on May 1. Final autopsy results indicate that
in addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a
contributing factor in his death. He had served 27 years on a 50-year
sentence out of Cameron County.
Angel Rene Mendez, 54, died May 7, 2020, at a hospital in Huntsville.
Mendez tested positive for COVID-19 on April 24. He was transported from
the Estelle Unit in Huntsville on April 26. Final autopsy results indicate that in
addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was the
cause of his death. He had served eight years on a 35-year sentence out of
Comal County.
Gilbert Briseno, 70, died May 9 at Hospital Galveston. Briseno tested
positive for COVID-19 on April 27. He was transported on May 2 from the
Estelle Unit in Huntsville. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
evidence suggests COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He had
served nearly 8 years of a 25-year sentence out of Travis County. He is
survived by his wife, Juanita, according to his obituary.
Charles Ray Martin, 80, died May 21, 2020, at a hospital in The Woodlands.
Martin tested positive for COVID-19 on April 27. He was transported on May
13 from the Estelle Unit in Huntsville. Final autopsy results indicate that in
contributing factor in his death. He had served three years on a life sentence
out of Galveston County.
Herman Martinez, 70, died May 28, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 12 from the Estelle Unit. Martinez tested positive for
COVID-19 and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. Preliminary
autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Martinez
had served six years of a 15-year sentence out of Bexar County.
Roy Lee Bosier, 59, died June 6, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Bosier tested
positive for COVID-19 on May 10. He was transported on May 14 from the
Estelle Unit in Huntsville to Hospital Galveston. There was no autopsy
conducted, but evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing cause of
death. He had served 29 years of a 99-year sentence out of Harris County.
Elias Villanueva, Jr., 74, died July 1, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Villanueva
tested positive for COVID-19 on May 2 and was transported from the unit on
June 30. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests
that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served six years
on a 20-year sentence out of Bell County.
Fernando Pena, 66, died Aug. 6, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on July 28 from the Estelle Unit in Huntsville on July 28 and tested
positive for the virus the next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served four years on an eight-year sentence out of Hale
County. According to his obituary, Pena was married for 45 years and drove
for a home health transportation company. He enjoyed listening to country
music and was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and the New Orleans
Saints, according to his obituary.
Garza West Unit
Melvin Leroy Taylor, 70, died Sept. 17, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on Aug. 28 from the unit in Beeville and tested positive for
COVID-19 the next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served 30 years on a 40-year sentence out of Bexar County.
Gist Unit
Joe Channel, 62, died June 2, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was

transported from the Gist Unit May 24. His family declined an autopsy, but the
virus is presumed to be a contributing cause of death. Channel had served 10
months of a three-year sentence out of Nacogdoches County. He is survived
by his son and two grandchildren, according to his obituary.
Gustavo Coronado, 66, died July 30, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Coronado
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 22 and was transported three days later
from the unit. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
over four years on an eight-year sentence out of McLennan County.
Goree Unit
Bernard Ferguson, 60, died May 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 6 from the Goree Unit. Ferguson tested positive for
COVID-19 and the preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus was a
contributing cause of death. Ferguson had served 43 years of a life sentence
out of Bell County.
Hightower Unit
Ruben Navarro, 59, died Oct. 13, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Navarro
tested positive for COVID-19 on Sept. 3 and was transported on Sept. 9 from
the Hightower Unit in Dayton. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served 16 years on a 30-year sentence out of Dallas County. Navarro, a
Dallas native, had worked as a systems technician for 18 years at
Southwestern Bell and for three years at Alcatel USA. He was involved
in ministry serving incarcerated men and women, according to his obituary.
Credit: Courtesy photo from the family

Ruben Navarro
Hodge Unit
Ramon Castillo, 59, died Aug. 14, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on July 6 from the Hodge Unit in Rusk and tested positive for the
virus the same day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
nearly 20 years on a 25-year sentence out of Bexar County.
Hutchins State Jail
Russell Hill, 60, died April 19, 2020, at a local hospital in Lancaster. He was
transported on April 16 from the Hutchins State Jail in Dallas and tested
positive for the virus the next day. Final autopsy results indicate that in
addition to pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing
factor in his death. He had served two years on a seven-year sentence out of
Bowie County. Russell grew up in Texarkana and served in the Marines.

Russell Hill, a former Marine, died of COVID-19 while in prison. His family wasn't immediately
notified.
Willie Charles Price, 56, died April 26, 2020, at a local hospital in Dallas. He
was transported on April 22 from the Hutchins State Jail in Dallas. Price tested
positive for COVID-19 on April 24, 2020. Final autopsy results indicate that in
factor in his death. He had served two years on a four-year sentence out of
Tarrant County.
Nathaniel Washington, 56, died Aug. 19, 2020, at a hospital. Washington
tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 16 and was transported that day from
the unit. Final autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number of pre-
existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was the immediate cause of his death.
He had served over seven years on a 99-year sentence out of Tarrant
County.
Jester III Unit
David Quintero, 70, died May 10, 2020, at the Jester III Unit. He tested
positive for COVID-19 and preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a
contributing cause of death. Quintero had served seven years of a 15-year
sentence out of Bexar County.
Edward Chandler Hughes, Jr., 74, died May 25, 2020, at Hospital
Galveston. He was transported from the Jester III Unit on May 17. Hughes
tested positive for COVID-19 and suffered from pre-existing medical
conditions. His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death. Hughes had served 48 years of a life sentence
out of Dallas County.
Harvey Lee Wendt, 79, died May 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 8. Wendt tested positive for COVID-19. His family
declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a contributing cause of
death. Wendt had served 31 years of a 45-year sentence out of Harris
County.
Nicolas Andres Sanchez, 28, died June 2, 2020, at a local hospital. He was
transported on May 20. Sanchez tested positive for COVID-19 on May 22.
The preliminary results of an autopsy indicated that COVID-19 was a
contributing cause of death. He had served one year of a three-year sentence
Terry Lee Walls, 67, died June 14, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Walls tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 5 and was transported that day. There was no
autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a
contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly 15 years on a 25-year
sentence out of Harris County.
James Brewer, 49, died June 16, 2020, at the Jester III Unit in Richmond.
Brewer tested positive for COVID-19 on June 2. Preliminary autopsy results
indicate that in addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions,
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly seven
years on a 30-year sentence out of Dallas County.
Phillip Daniel Tompkins, 66, died June 28, 2020, at a Richmond hospital. He
was transported on June 19 and tested positive for COVID-19 on June 20.
Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to pre-existing medical
conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served
over 39 years on a life sentence out of Harris County. He is survived by two
children.
Jester IV Unit
Brent Dwayne Sloan, 65, died Oct. 13, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on Oct. 12 and tested positive for the virus the next day. There
was a contributing factor in his death. He had served three years on a 12-year
Greg Davis, 56, died July 21, 2020, at a Richmond hospital. Davis tested
positive for COVID-19 on July 13 and was transported the next day. Final
conditions, COVID-19 was the immediate cause of his death. He had served
43 years on a life sentence out of Harris County.
Lindsey State Jail
Raymond Lonzo Kirbie, 65, died Aug. 17, 2020, at a Wichita Falls hospital.
Kirbie tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 2 and was transported that day.
There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served 10 months on
a five-year sentence out of Henderson County.
McConnell Unit
Daniel Campos, 45, died Aug.5, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was

transported from the McConnell Unit in Beeville on July 23. Campos tested
positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 5. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served nine years on a 65-year sentence out of Nueces
County. According to his obituary, Daniel had a “heart of gold and he was
always willing to help someone in need. ... Daniel will be missed by all whom
knew him and loved him.” He is survived by his children.
Karl Patrick Houlditch, 61, died Aug. 13, 2020, at Hospital
Galveston. Houlditch tested positive for COVID-19 on July 24 and was
transported that day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a
factor in his death. He had served nearly two years on multiple eight-year
sentences out of Harrison County.
Ricardo Maldonado, 63, died Aug. 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Maldonado tested positive for COVID-19 on July 25 and was transported that
day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served 22 years on a
40-year sentence out of Wilson County.
Michael Unit
Richard Calvin Gipson, 52, died May 26, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Gipson tested positive for COVID-19 on May 8 and was transported that day.
life sentence out of Smith County. According to his obituary, Gipson worked
as a truck driver and an ordained minister. He is survived by his wife and
children.
Jose Guzman, 61, died May 28, 2020, at a local hospital. Guzman tested
positive for COVID-19 on May 19 and was transported that day. There was no
autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a
sentence out of Hidalgo County.
Stephen Lewis Smith, 70, died June 4, 2020, at a local hospital. He was
transported on June 3 from the Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony and tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 4. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served over 10 years on a life sentence out of Denton County.
David Rene Martinez, 61, died June 21, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Martinez tested positive for COVID-19 on May 22. He was transported from
the Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony to a local hospital on May 22, and then
to Hospital Galveston on June 4. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in
cause in his death. He had served two years on a 65-year sentence out of
Harris County.
Clifford Lee Lewis, 58, died Aug. 11, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony on July 26. Lewis
tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 11. There was no autopsy conducted,
but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served 18 years on a 45-year sentence out of Bexar County.
Montford Unit
Alfredo De La Vega, 54, died May 5, 2020, at a local hospital. He was

transported on April 27 from the Montford Unit. De La Vega suffered from pre-
existing medical conditions. Preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a
contributing cause of death. De La Vega had served 20 years of a 20-year
sentence out of Bexar County. De La Vega died 12 days before he was
scheduled to be released from prison, according to the Texas prison system.
Danyel Roshon Sims, 43, died May 12, 2020, at a local hospital in Lubbock.
Sims tested positive for COVID-19 on April 24 and was transported April 27.
Final autopsy results indicate that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served over 10 years on an 18-year sentence out of Harris
County.
Ney Unit
Guadalupe Herrera Trevino, 77, died June 6, 2020, at a San Antonio

hospital. He was transported from the Ney Unit in Hondo on May 23 and
tested positive for the virus that day. Final autopsy results indicate that
COVID-19 was the immediate cause of his death. He had served over one
year on a three-year sentence out of Taylor County.
Timothy Black, 47, died June 8, 2020, at a local hospital in San Antonio.
Black tested positive for COVID-19 on May 14 and was transported on May
18. Final autopsy results indicate that COVID-19 was the immediate cause of
his death. He had served over three years on a four-year sentence out of
Bowie County.
Pack Unit
Leonard Clerkly, 62, died April 11, 2020, at Grimes County Hospital. He was
transported on April 11 from the Pack Unit. Preliminary autopsy results
suggest pneumonia due to COVID-19 to be a contributing cause of death.
Clerkly had served five years of a life sentence out of Tarrant County.
Daniel Thompson, 71, died May 5, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 30 from the Pack Unit. Thompson suffered from pre-
existing medical conditions. Preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a
contributing cause of death. Thompson had served 24 years of a 50-year
David Uhrich, 60, died May 19, 2020. at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 13 from the Pack Unit in Navasota. Uhrich suffered from
pre-existing medical conditions. Preliminary autopsy results suggest COVID-
19 as a possible cause of death. Uhrich had served one year and nine months
of a five-year sentence out of Travis County.
Cedric Dewayne Lacy, 65, died May 28, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on May 12 from the Pack Unit. Lacy tested positive for
autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Lacy had
served nearly 30 years of a 45-year sentence out of Dallas County.
David Brooks, 65, died May 28, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 12 from the Pack Unit. Brooks tested positive for COVID-
19 and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. Preliminary autopsy
results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Brooks had served
45 years of a life sentence out of Harris County.
Michael Lynn Sprague, 72, died June 4, 2020, at a hospital. He tested
positive for COVID-19 and was transported two days later. The preliminary
results of an autopsy suggest COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served 30 years of a life sentence out of Dallas County.
Isidro Hernandez, 70, died June 5, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 28 from the Pack Unit. Hernandez tested positive for
autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Hernandez
had served 16 years of a 50-year sentence out of Bell County.
Charles Hart, 71, died June 6, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on June 2 from the Pack Unit. Hart tested positive for COVID-19
and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. No autopsy was performed.
Hart had served nearly 38 years of a life sentence out of Dallas County.
Earnest Jones Jr., 62, died June 12, 2020, at a hospital in Bryan. He tested
positive for COVID-19 on June 4 and was transported on June 11 from the
unit. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that COVID-19 was a contributing
cause in his death. He had served six years of a 12-year sentence out of
Houston County.
James Gibson, 65, died June 13, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 28 from the Pack Unit in Navasota and tested positive for
COVID-19 the next day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that he suffered
from multiple medical conditions and that COVID-19 was a contributing factor
in his death. He had served 27 years of a 35-year sentence out of Bexar
County.
Stephen Allan Fox, 62, died June 14, 2020, at a local hospital in Bryan. He
tested positive for COVID-19 May 23 and was transported on May 29 from the
unit. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number of pre-
existing medical conditions, and the virus was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served 21 years and 6 months on a 99-year sentence out of
Palo Pinto County.
Jimmy Ray Malone, 76, died June 15, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He tested
positive for COVID-19 on May 31 and was transported that day to a
hospital. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests
COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He had served one year and
seven months of a seven-year sentence out of Collin County. Malone, a
Greenville native, worked as a brick mason and retired from the North Texas
Water District. He is survived by his wife of 55 years and his
children, according to his obituary.
Lewis Anderson, 55, died June 16, 2020, at a hospital. He tested positive for
COVID-19 on June 8 and was transported from the unit that day. There was
no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a
contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly 24 years on a 40-year
sentence out of Tarrant County.
Jesus Rodriguez, 68, died June 18, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Rodriguez
tested positive for COVID-19 on May 23 and was transported on May 30 from
the unit. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number
of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served three years on an eight-year sentence out of Bell
County.
James Robert Sampley, 59, died June 19, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on May 25 from the Pack Unit in Navasota. He tested positive
on May 30. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number
of prior medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death.
He had served five years and nine months on a 15-year sentence out of
Eastland County.
Charles Ray Mason, 84, died June 20, 2020, at a hospital in College Station.
He was transported from the Pack Unit in Navasota on June 9 and tested
positive for the virus. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
nearly 32 years on multiple life sentences out of Dallas County.
Tommy Russ Shoefstall, 62, died June 21, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
tested positive for the virus on June 8. He was transported on June 13 from
the Pack Unit in Navasota. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served 25 years on a 60-year sentence out of Clay County.
Gilbert Gonzales, 67, died July 27, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He tested
positive for the virus on June 19. He was transported on July 18 from the Pack
Unit in Navasota. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a
factor in his death. He had served over 10 years on a 13-year sentence out of
Fort Bend County.
Credit: WFAA
Polunsky Unit
Osa Alohanaeke, 56, died July 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on July 12 from the Polunsky Unit in
Livingston. Alohanaeke tested positive for COVID-19 on July 25. There was
no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a
contributing factor in his death. He had served five years on a 40-year
sentence out of Fort Bend County.
Powledge Unit
Ray Caballero Tapia, 74, died Sept. 14, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Tapia
tested positive for COVID-19 on Sep. 4 and was transported two days later.
COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his death. He had served three years
on a six-year sentence out of Tarrant County.
Amador Toledo Flores, 79, died Sept. 11, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Flores tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 18 and was transported Aug. 22
from the Powledge Unit in Palestine. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served seven years on a 15-year sentence out of Smith
County.
Ramsey Unit
Ronnie James Sparks, 55, died July 21, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Sparks
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 29 and was transported the next day
from the Ramsey Unit in Rosharon. There was no autopsy conducted, but
death. He had served nearly 22 years on a 45-year sentence out of Dallas
County.
Dennis Lynn Lowry, 72, died July 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Lowry
tested positive for COVID-19 on July 7 and was transported on July 13. There
was a contributing factor in his death. He had served 15 years on a 20-year
Valentin Lopez Gonzalez, 69, died Aug. 13, 2020, at Hospital Galveston.
Gonzalez tested positive for COVID-19 on July 6 and was transported on July
17. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence suggests that
20-year sentence out of Guadalupe County. Gonzalez, a Rosharon resident,
is survived by his wife and children, according to his obituary.
Robertson Unit
Ralph Neely, 70, died April 29, 2020, at a local hospital. He was transported
on April 17. Neely tested positive for COVID-19. Preliminary autopsy indicates
the virus as a preliminary cause of death. Neely had served 26 years of a life
sentence out of Jefferson County.
Reginal Dewayne Jones, 65, died May 4, 2020, at the Robertson Unit in
Abilene. Jones tested positive for COVID-19 the day of his death. Final
over 16 years on a 55-year sentence out of Brazos County.
Segovia Unit
Francis Devassy Puther, 73, died Aug. 18, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on July 21. Puther tested positive for COVID-19 on July 22.
No autopsy was conducted, but medical evidence suggests that COVID-19
was a contributing factor in his death. He had served one year on a two-year
sentence out of Collin County. Puther, of Wylie, was born in India. He is
survived by his wife and children, according to his obituary.
Scott Unit
Charles Edward Burke, 62, died May 4, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Burke
tested positive for COVID-19 on April 30 and was transported from the Scott
Unit in Angleton on May 3. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
served nearly three years of a 50-year sentence out of Orange County.
Adrian Duncan, 51, died May 10, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 26. Preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a
possible cause of death. Duncan had served nearly 10 years of a 35-year
Smith Unit
David Martinez, 54, died May 8, 2020, at the West Texas Hospital co-located
with the Montford Unit. Martinez tested positive for COVID-19 on April 10 and
transported from the Smith Unit in Lamesa. There was no autopsy conducted,
but medical evidence suggests COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death.
He had served five years on an eight-year sentence out of Nueces
County. Martinez, a Corpus Christi native, retired from the Corpus Christi
Street department. He enjoyed finishing and gardening. He is survived by his
children, according to his obituary.
Alvin Ray Spencer, 65, died June 25, 2020, at the West Texas Hospital in
Lubbock. Spencer tested positive for COVID-19 on May 11 and was
transported from the unit. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served nearly 18 years on a 35-year sentence out of Eastland County.
Stiles Unit
Mario Limone Saucedo, 72, died June 24, 2020, at a Beaumont hospital.
Saucedo tested positive for COVID-19 on May 12. He was transported on
June 2 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. Preliminary autopsy results indicate
that in addition to pre-existing health conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing
factor in his death. He had served over 17 years on three consecutive 12-year
sentences out of Menard County.
Raynaldo Perez, 72, died June 28, 2020, at a local hospital in Port Arthur. He
was transported on June 28 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont and tested
positive for COVID-19 that day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in
contributing cause of death. He had served over 26 years on a 30-year
sentence out of Victoria County.
Willie Koehler, 75, died July 4, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on June 26 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. Koehler tested
death. He had served 11 years on a life sentence out of Brazoria County.
Larry Larnail Gray, 69, died July 5, 2020, at a local hospital in Beaumont.
Gray tested positive for COVID-19 on June 26, 2020. He was transported
from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont on June 30, 2020. Preliminary autopsy
results indicate that in addition to pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19
was a contributing factor in his death. He had served nearly 20 years on a life
Vernell Smith, 55, died July 18, 2020, at a Beaumont hospital. He was
transported from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont on July 14. Smith tested positive
for COVID-19 on July 18, 2020. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in
of Harris County.
Jose Franco Vargas, 77, died July 19, 2020, at a Port Arthur hospital. Vargas
tested positive for COVID-19 on June 25 and was transported two days later.
Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to pre-existing medical
seven years on a 20-year sentence out of Bexar County.
John Preston Creech, 72, died July 20, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on June 24 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont and tested positive
for COVID-19 that day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served 11 years on a life sentence out of Collin County.
Joe Earl Thomas, 70, died July 25, 2020, at a Beaumont hospital. He was
transported on July 20 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont and tested positive for
COVID-19 on June 26. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition
to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing
factor in his death. He had served 31 years on a life sentence out of Victoria
County.
David Hernandez, 57, died July 27, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont on July 18 and tested positive for
COVID-19 that day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
over 15 years on a 45-year sentence out of Bexar County.
Richard Vara Pina, 62, died July 27, 2020, at a Beaumont hospital. He was
transported on July 13 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont and tested positive
the next day. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to pre-
He had served nearly four years on a 30-year sentence out of Guadalupe
County.
Jose Garcia Briseno, 63, died July 28, 2020, at a Port Arthur hospital.
Briseno tested positive for COVID-19 on July 7, 2020. He was transported on
July 10 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. Preliminary autopsy results indicate
that in addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was
a contributing factor in his death. He had served seven years on multiple life
sentences out of Dimmit and Webb Counties.
Michael Wesley Searcy, 64, died Aug. 1, 2020, at a Port Arthur hospital. He
was transported on July 14 from the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. Searcy tested
positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 1. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in
contributing factor in his death. He had served over 14 years on a 60-year
sentence out of Marion County.
Stringfellow Unit
Lee Rue Culp, Jr., 58, died May 2, 2020, at a Houston hospital. He was
transported on May 1 from the Stringfellow Unit in Rosharon and tested
addition to a number of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was the
cause of his death. He had served one year on a six-year sentence out of
Dallas County. His obituary said he enjoyed playing tennis when he was
younger and was educated in Dallas ISD.
Credit: Major Funeral Home
Lee Rue Culp
Telford Unit
Bartolo Infante, 72, died April 7, 2020, at a local hospital. He was transported
on April 3 from the Telford Unit. Infante tested positive for COVID-19 and
suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. Autopsy results are pending.
Coronavirus is Keeping Prison Families From Saying Their Last Goodbye
Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice and immigration. Last Monday, María Felícitas Infante Zamora
and her siblings heard from Texas prison officials that their father, Bartolo Infante, had died. Infante, 72, had been in
prison since 2000 for a sexual assault.
The Marshall Project |Apr 16, 2020
Johnny Davis, 60, died April 14, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 9 from the Telford Unit to a local hospital and then to
Hospital Galveston on April 11. Davis suffered from pre-existing medical
conditions. His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death. Davis was serving a 10-year sentence out of Hunt
County.
Willie Eanes, 84, died April 20, 2020, at UT Tyler Medical Center. He was
transported on April 14 from the Telford Unit. Eanes tested positive for
COVID-19 and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. His family
death. Eanes was serving a 45-year sentence out of Tarrant County.
Robert Hohn, 79, died April 22, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 14 from the Telford Unit to a local hospital and then to
Hospital Galveston. Hohn tested positive to COVID-19 and suffered from pre-
existing medical conditions. His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is
presumed to be a contributing cause of death. Hohn was serving a 50-year
sentence out of Liberty County.
Frederick Ebenal, 76, died April 23, 2020, at a hospital. He was transported
from the Telford Unit. Ebenal tested positive for COVID-19. His family
death. He had served 28 years of a 48-year sentence out of Tom Green
County.
Bennie Skinner, 79, died April 29, 2020, at Wadley Hospital. He was
transported on April 21 from the Telford Unit. Skinner tested positive for
declined an autopsy, but pneumonia due to COVID-19 is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death. Skinner had served 30 years of a life sentence
out of Parker County.
Tommy Rodriguez, 62, died May 2, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 13 from the Telford Unit. Rodriguez tested positive for
contributing cause of death. Rodriguez had served 14 years of a life sentence
out of Harris County.
Edward Lamoyne King, 60, died May 2, 2020, at a local hospital. He was
transported on April 27 from the Telford Unit in New Boston. King tested
positive for COVID-19 on April 29. There was no autopsy conducted, but
medical evidence suggests COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He
had served nine years of a 35-year sentence out of Williamson County.
Miguel Arciba, 62, died May 3, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 13 from the Telford Unit. Arciba tested positive for
autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Arciba had
served 13 years of a life sentence out of Ellis County. Arciba, a native of
George West, Texas, is survived by his children, according to this obituary.
Marion Sayles, 62, died May 6, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 15 from the Telford Unit. Sayles tested positive for
declined an autopsy, but pneumonia due to COVID-19 is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death. Sayles had served eight years of a life sentence
Terrell Unit
Harold Dean Wilson, 65, died April 23, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 18 from the Terrell Unit. He tested positive for COVID-19.
His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a contributing
cause of death. Wilson was serving a 20-year sentence out of Randall
County.
Michael Milligan, 64, died April 26, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 19 from the Terrell Unit. Milligan tested positive for
contributing cause of death. Milligan had served seven years of a 30-year
Gerald Barragan, 62, died May 5, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 26 from the Terrell Unit. Barragan suffered from pre-
existing medical conditions. His family declined an autopsy, but pneumonia
due to COVID-19 is presumed to be a contributing cause of death. Barragan
had served 11 months of a 5-year sentence out of Kendall County.
Jose Victor Bonilla, 63, died May 9, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Bonilla
tested positive for COVID-19 on April 27 and was transported the same day
from the unit. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical evidence
suggests COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death. He had served seven
years of a 30-year sentence out of Harris County. Bonilla, a native of Chicago,
was the eldest of six siblings. He worked as a waiter to help his
family financially as a young man. He later became a machinist. According to
his obituary, he was “known for having a feisty nature, direct personality and a
deep love for Houston sports.” He is survived by his two daughters.
William Calahan, 72, died May 16, 2020, at a local hospital in Angleton. He
was transported on May 15 from the Terrell Unit in Rosharon and tested
sentence out of Collin County.
Edward Hawkins Jr., 63, died June 11, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 27 from the Terrell Unit in Rosharon Hawkins tested
death. He had served nearly 16 years on a 45-year sentence out of Galveston
County. Hawkins, known as “Hawk” to his family, was a Vietnam War veteran.
He later worked as an electrician, music engineer and auto
mechanic, according to his obituary.
Sherman Albert Davis, 63, died July 28, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. Davis
tested positive for COVID-19 on July 20 and transported three days later from
the unit. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number
of pre-existing medical conditions, COVID-19 was a contributing factor in his
death. He had served 25 years on multiple life sentences out of Harris
County.
Vance Unit
James Johnson, 50, died July 23, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He tested
positive for COVID-19 on July 7 and was transported the next day from the
unit. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that in addition to a number of pre-
He had served over 13 years on a 25-year sentence out of Nueces County.
Wynne Unit
James Nealy, 68, died April 15, 2020, at a hospital. He was transported on
April 15 from the Wynne Unit. Nealy tested positive for COVID-19 and
preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death.
Nealy was serving a 99-year sentence out of Bell County. Nealy served in the
U.S. Army and worked as an auto mechanic, according to his obituary. He
is survived by his children.
Credit: Branford Dawson Funeral Home

James Nealy
Elijah Neighbors, 64, died April 18, 2020, at a hospital in Huntsville. He was
transported on April 17 from the Wynne Unit in Huntsville. Neighbors tested
positive for COVID-19 on April 18. Final autopsy results indicate that in
of Victoria County.
Luis Garza, 53, died April 19, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 15 from the Wynne Unit. Garza tested positive for
COVID-19 and was suffering from a pre-existing medical condition.
Preliminary autopsy results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death.
Garza had served 12 years of a 25-year sentence out of Dallas County.
James Lorke, 65, died April 21, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 16 from the Wynne Unit. Hohn tested positive for COVID-
19. His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death. Lorke had served 28 years of a 99-year sentence
out of Bexar County.
Timothy Bazrowx, 63, died April 23, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 17 from the Wynne Unit. He tested positive for COVID-19
and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. His family declined an
autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a contributing cause of
death. Bazrowx was serving a 20-year sentence out of Ellis County. Bazrowx,
a Vietnam War veteran, was a prolific writer, pen pal, book author,
and contributor to The Marshall Project.
Thomas Rodriguez, 79, died April 23, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported from the Wynne Unit to Huntsville Memorial Hospital and then
transported on April 19 to Hospital Galveston. Rodriguez tested positive for
death. Rodriguez was serving a life sentence out of Harris County.
Nathaniel Morgan, 77, died April 24, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 22 from the Wynne Unit. Morgan tested positive for
death. Morgan was serving a life sentence out of Tarrant County.
Gary Hampton, 64, died April 25, 2020, at a hospital in Huntsville. He tested
positive for COVID-19 on April 17, the same day he was transported from the
Wynne Unit in Huntsville. Final autopsy results indicate that, in addition to pre-
He had served over 16 years on a life sentence out of Tarrant County.
Vaughn Harvey, 70, died April 26, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 22 from the Wynne Unit to a nearby hospital and then
transported on April 23 to Hospital Galveston. He tested positive for COVID-
19. His family declined an autopsy, but the virus is presumed to be a
contributing cause of death. Harvey was serving a life sentence out of Smith
County.
Paul Brown, 55, died April 26, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 18 from the Wynne Unit. Brown tested positive for
contributing cause of death. Brown had served seven years of a 50-year
sentence out of Orange County.
Joe Rodriguez Coronado, 71, died May 8, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on April 18 from the Wynne Unit to the Estelle Unit in
Huntsville. Coronado tested positive for COVID-19 on April 19 and was later
transported on May 3 to Hospital Galveston. There was no autopsy
conducted, but medical evidence suggests COVID-19 was a contributing
cause of death. He had served nearly 24 years of a 55-year sentence out of
Dallas County.
Thomas Weber, 52, died May 11, 2020, at HCA Hospital Conroe. He was
transported on May 10 from the Wynne Unit. Weber tested positive for the
COVID-19 virus and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. Preliminary
autopsy results suggest the virus as a possible cause of death. Weber had
served seven years of a 30-year sentence out of Polk County.
Anthony Edwards, 52, died May 12, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on April 26 from the Wynne Unit in Huntsville and tested positive
for COVID-19 the next day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
served over 24 years of a life sentence out of Harrison County.
Jose Perez, 70, died May 30, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was
transported on May 27 from the Wynne Unit. Perez tested positive for COVID-
19 and suffered from pre-existing medical conditions. Preliminary autopsy
results suggest the virus as a contributing cause of death. Brooks had served
11 years of a 90-year sentence out of El Paso County.
Stephen Bentford McRae, 52, died Aug. 25, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He
was transported on Aug. 14 from the Wynne Unit in Huntsville. He tested
positive for the virus that day. There was no autopsy conducted, but medical
had served seven months on a two-year sentence out of Navarro County.
No Way Out: Here are the
Texas prison employees
who have died of COVID-19
Author: Tanya Eiserer

Updated: 4:30 PM CST December 13, 2020
Elizabeth Jones was afraid of getting COVID-19 while at work in the Texas
prison system.
Her family says she was directly overseeing prisoners sickened by the virus at
the Carole Young Unit in Texas City.
Jones died from COVID-19 over the summer after spending two weeks
hospitalized. She was a year shy of retirement, her family says.
“She was afraid of getting it and she knew that she was in a position that she
was most likely to get it,” said her sister, Sandra Hightower.
A WFAA investigation with The Marshall Project exposes how the coronavirus
was allowed to spread through state prisons due to a lackluster response by
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
By early December, more than 33,000 staff and prisoners had caught the
virus, and in addition to the more than 100 prisoner fatalities, at least 26 staff
members died after catching COVID-19.
The deaths of employees and prisoners have been documented on the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice website. Here is a list of those prison system
employees:
Donald Parker, 73, worked nine years for TDCJ and was a food service
manager at the Neal Unit in Amarillo. His last day of work was Sept. 25. Three
days later, Parker tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized. He died
on Oct. 1. He is survived by his two sons, according to the Officer Down
Memorial Page.
James Weston Jr., 55, had more than 13 years of service with TDCJ. He was
assigned to the Johnston Unit in Winnsboro as a correctional officer. His last
day on the job was Aug. 14. Six days later, Weston tested positive for COVID-
19 and had been self-quarantining. He was found dead in his home on Aug.
26. Weston, a San Diego native, loved hunting, fishing and the outdoors and
had previously worked for Tri-State Delivery. He is survived by his two
sons, according to his obituary.
James Weston
Herbert Garcia, 57, had nearly 30 years of service with TDCJ and was
assigned to the Southern Regional Transportation Unit in Rosharon. On July
15, Garcia tested positive for COVID-19. He was transported the next day to a
Sugarland Hospital with complications. Garcia died on Aug. 18.
Elizabeth Jones, 58, worked 19 years for TDCJ and was assigned to the
Carole Young Unit in Dickinson. Her family told WFAA she was directly
overseeing patients with COVID-19 and was extremely afraid of contracting
the virus. She tested positive for COVID-19 on July 29. Jones was
hospitalized on Aug. 6 at Mainland Hospital. Two days later, she was
transferred to Parkway Plaza Hospital in Houston. Her daughter also became
sick with COVID-19 and was hospitalized as well. Jones died Aug. 14. Her
family says she loved to dance, spend time with her family and friend, and had
the “heart of a diva.” She is survived by her husband and their
children, according to her obituary.
Credit: WFAA
Elizabeth Jones, 58, died of COVID-19 while working as a prison correctional officer. Her
family also as been denied state benefits.
Walterio Rodriguez, 67, had 11 years of service with TDCJ and was
assigned to the Segovia Unit in Edinburg as a chaplain. His last day working
there was July 15. He was hospitalized on July 20 in McAllen, where he tested
positive for COVID-19. He died on Aug. 13. Rodriguez held various positions
with his local church including director of the children’s church and the youth
group. He enjoyed spending time with family, hunting at his ranch, playing
Scrabble, music, swimming and gardening, according to his obituary. He is
survived by his wife and children.
Lebouath Boua, 61, worked for the Texas prison system for four years. He
was a correctional officer at the Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony. He last
worked there on July 10. He tested positive for COVID-19 on July 18. Boua
was hospitalized in critical condition on July 29 at Medical City Arlington. He
died on Aug. 11.
Charles Chacon Jr., 77, worked 22 years for TDCJ. For the last seven
years, he was assigned as an industrial specialist at the McConnell Unit’s
garment factory in Beeville. He was hospitalized with COVID symptoms on
July 6 at a Beeville hospital. He tested positive for COVID-19 on July 13. On
July 22, he was transferred to San Antonio Military Medical Center for
treatment. He died on Aug. 11. Chacon was a Vietnam veteran and served his
country in the US Navy for more than 20 years, according to his obituary. He
is survived by his wife of 51 years and children.
Sgt. Richard Holley, 62, had 24 years of service with TDCJ, and for the last
six years, he was assigned to the Goodman Unit in Jasper. After testing
positive for COVID-19 he was hospitalized at St. Elizabeth Hospital in
Beaumont on July 20. Holley died on Aug. 4. Holley, a native of Puerto Rico,
had lived in Jasper for 15 years. He enjoyed working on home projects
together with his wife, Beverly. He liked collecting guns and was a former gun
dealer. He is survived by his wife and children, according to his obituary.
Eric Johnson, 37, had more than 18 years of service with TDCJ as a
correctional officer. He was assigned to the Byrd Unit in Huntsville. After
testing positive for COVID-19, he was hospitalized on July 26
at a Bryan hospital. Johnson died the next day. His wife, Charity, and their
four children also contracted COVID-19. He had his wife had married in
October 2019. She also works as a correctional officer. Johnson’s family told
WFAA that he was around prisoners who had tested positive for COVID-19,
and that they believe he got the virus on the job.
Credit: WFAA
Eric Johnson, 37, a father of four, died of COVID-19 while working as a Texas correctional
officer. The state has denied his family benefits.
Ruben Martinez, 48, had nearly two years of service with TDCJ. He was
assigned to the Lopez State Jail in Edinberg. Martinez tested positive for
COVID-19 on July 13. Six days later, he began having complications from the
virus and was admitted to an Edinburg hospital where he died on July 26.
Sandra Rivera, 50, had more than seven years of service with TDCJ and was
assigned to the Torres Unit near San Antonio. Rivera worked as an assistant
commissary manager. After testing positive for COVID-19, Rivera was
hospitalized July 7 in San Antonio. She died on July 21.
Jackson Pongay, 56, had more than four years of service with TDCJ. He was
assigned to the Lychner State Jail in Humble as a correctional officer. His last
day working in the facility was June 25. After testing positive for COVID-
19, Pongay was hospitalized on July 5 in Houston. He died on July 19.
Jerry Esparza, 46, had more than 25 years of service with TDCJ and
was assigned as a correctional officer at the Jester III Unit in Richmond. He
became sick following an outbreak of COVID-19 among staff and inmates. He
was hospitalized on June 17 at a Sugarland hospital. He died there on July
15. He is survived by his wife and four children.
Kenneth Harbin, 60, had more than 30 years of service with TDCJ. He was
assigned to the Daniel Unit in Snyder as a correctional officer. After testing
positive for COVID-19, he was hospitalized on June 28. Despite showing
signs of improvement, he died on July 4. Harbin, a Snyder native, began his
career at the Ramsey Unit in Angleton before returning home to Snyder as
one of the first officers to open the Daniel Unit. He is survived by his children.
Thomas Ogungbire, 54, was a 10-year-veteran of TDCJ and worked at the
Hutchins State Jail in Dallas as a correctional officer. Ogungbire called in sick
on April 14. On April 20, he tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized
with symptoms. On May 17, Ogungbire was transferred to Baylor Hospital in
Dallas. He died June 11.
Thomas Ogunbire
Maria Mendez, 59, was employed by TDCJ for almost 11 years and
worked as a correctional officer at the Wynne Unit. She was hospitalized after
work on April 12. She was transferred on April 15 to Methodist Hospital in
Houston, where she was placed on a ventilator. She tested positive for
COVID-19 and died May 8.
Maria Mendez
James Coleman, 53, was a 22-year-veteran of TDCJ and worked at the

Middleton Unit in Abilene. He last worked on April 26. The next day, he
collapsed at home. He was taken to the hospital, where he tested positive for
the virus. He died on April 28. Coleman, an Abilene native, is survived by his
wife.

James Coleman
Coy D. Coffman Jr., 65, was employed by TDCJ for nine years and worked
as a correctional officer at the Telford Unit in New Boston. On April 14, he
began suffering symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and was tested the next
day. On April 17, he was admitted to a local hospital in Texarkana due to
possible complications from COVID-19. Coffman’s test returned positive two
days later. He died on April 26. Coffman served in the U.S. Army Military
Police. According to his obituary, he investigated war crimes in Desert
Storm and served on the security detail for various senators and military
officials. He was a Tulsa Police officer and criminal justice professor at
Eastern Oklahoma State College. He is survived by his wife and children.
Coy Coffman
Akbar Shabazz, 70, was TDCJ’s first Muslim prison chaplain. He served
initially as a TDCJ volunteer and joined the agency as an employee in 1977.
He served as Regional Area Muslim Chaplain, coordinating Taleem classes,
Jum'mah services and leading the coordination of yearly Ramadan
observances. In 2012, he received his honorary doctorate degree in Divinity
from the Trinity International Seminary.
Akbar Shabazz
Jonathon Keith Goodman, 52, was employed by TDCJ for 14 years. He was
a correctional officer at the Clements Unit in Amarillo. Coleman’s last day at
work was April 15. Two days later, he was found collapsed in his home after
suffering an apparent stroke. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
Testing showed he had COVID-9. He died April 21, after being removed from
life support. He is survived by his wife and children. His wife also works as a
correctional officer.
Jonathon Goodman
Kelvin Wilcher, 49, was assigned to the Estelle Unit in Huntsville. On April
1, he went to a Houston hospital and suffered a cardiac event. A tested
positive for COVID-19. He died on April 6. He was a U.S. Navy veteran and
had served with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for one year. He is
survived by his wife and children.
Kevin Wilcher was the first Texas prison employee to die from COVID-19.
Gerald “Jerry” Bedison, 22, had more than seven years of service with
TDCJ, and was assigned as a chaplain at the Neal Unit in Amarillo. On Nov.
5, Bedison tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized. He died Nov.
16.
Rodrick Rodgers, 45, had nearly 11 years of service with TDCJ. He was
employed as a food service manager at the Eastham Unit in Huntsville. He
tested positive on Nov. 4 and was hospitalized in Conroe. He died Nov. 11 in
the intensive care unit.
Michael Harper, 56, died Dec. 1, 2020. A maintenance supervisor, Harper
had over 22 years of service with TDCJ. He was assigned to the
Skyview/Hodge complex in Rusk. On Oct. 13, Harper sought treatment for
COVID symptoms and tested positive for COVID-19. He was initially
hospitalized on Oct. 19 at a Tyler hospital after suffering respiratory
complications. On Nov. 3, he was placed on a ventilator.
Kenneth Russell, 84, died Dec. 2, 2020. He worked in the prison system for
more than 10 years and was assigned to the Smith Unit in Lamesa. Prison
officials said Russell tested positive on Nov. 11 and was admitted into a
Lubbock hospital on Nov. 19. Russell is survived by his wife of 50 years and
six children.

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Our “No Way Out: Covid Behind Bars” investigation had a robust digital presence in addition to

our half-hour special report.

A local TV station investigates the largest

Authors: Keri Blakinger (The Marshall Project), Tanya Eiserer (WFAA)

Then Hill piped up: “I’m cold.”

But Hill would become one of the first.

‘Waiting for the spark’

The following week, the first prisoner died.

Three years later, officers say they weren’t.

‘I hope I don’t get this stuff’

Questionable quarantines and community spread

‘As long as he’s breathing’

Then he tested positive for the virus.

He died two days later.

Deteriorating conditions and desperate measures

The prison spokesman disputed that account.

‘How did you deal with this?”

Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

April 6 - Kevin Wilcher, a 49-year-old officer at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville,

The Marshall Project |May 01, 2020

April 16 - Federal District Judge Keith Ellison issues a preliminary

The Marshall Project |May 30, 2020

Aug. 24 - Despite the attempts at decreased transfers due to the pandemic,

Credit: The Marshall Project

Author: Keri Blakinger (The Marshall Project)

The Marshall Project |Apr 02, 2020

There have been significant delays in the reporting of COVID-19-related

Credit: Trevino Funeral Home

Stanley Leon Blackwell, 52, died May 3, 2020, at a hospital in Huntsville. He

Carole Young Unit

Credit: Hondo Funeral Home

Matthew Clayton Pouncey, 58, died Aug. 29, 2020, at a Lubbock

Antonio Fernandez Ayala, 79, died June 4, 2020, at Hospital

Credit: Morales Funeral Home

East Texas Treatment Facility

Credit: Hamil Funeral Home

Credit: Dove Funeral Home

Garza West Unit

Joe Channel, 62, died June 2, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was

Credit: Courtesy photo from the family

Hutchins State Jail

Credit: Courtesy photo

Jester III Unit

Lindsey State Jail

Daniel Campos, 45, died Aug.5, 2020, at Hospital Galveston. He was

Alfredo De La Vega, 54, died May 5, 2020, at a local hospital. He was

Guadalupe Herrera Trevino, 77, died June 6, 2020, at a San Antonio

The Marshall Project |Apr 16, 2020

Credit: Branford Dawson Funeral Home

Author: Tanya Eiserer

James Coleman, 53, was a 22-year-veteran of TDCJ and worked at the

Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

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