“We are proud of the job we have done managing the pandemic thus far,” he said, “and the results bear out that our plan continues to be successful.” Nor would he comment on allegations that the authorities had deliberately withheld tests from many prisoners who showed symptoms of the virus.
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“If you find it is widespread, how do you handle that with your guards? Never ask a question if you aren’t going to like the answer.”Ī spokesman for the corrections department, Ken Pastorick, would not disclose the number of inmates who have been tested at Angola.
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“If you do that testing, how are you going to handle the results?” the former official, Dr. The testing was so limited that a former medical director for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections said he believed officials there had sought to avoid confirming the existence of an outbreak they feared they could not control. Williams contracted COVID-19 while incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.ĭespite having test kits available, Angola also sharply limited its testing of prisoners during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, screening at most a few hundred of the roughly 5,500 held there. Janet Clark, left, embraces her sisters Rogers, middle, and Noel Fluence, right, after the funeral service for Williams, their brother, on May 18, 2020. They said at least four of the 12 prisoners who have died in the pandemic, including Williams, had been denied needed medical help for days because their symptoms were not considered sufficiently serious. While the novel coronavirus burned through Angola, as the country’s largest maximum-security prison is known, officials insisted they were testing all inmates who showed symptoms, isolating those who got sick and transferring more serious cases to the hospital in Baton Rouge, about 60 miles to the south.īut from inside Angola’s walls, inmates painted a very different picture - one of widespread illness, dysfunctional care and sometimes inexplicable neglect. If they wanted to say goodbye, he said, they should hurry. The day after that, a doctor called to say Williams had gone into cardiac arrest. The next day, he was rushed to a regional hospital in critical condition. On May 7, a nurse assured one of Williams’ sisters that he was improving. When they finally reached one of the senior guard officers, family members said, he told them Williams didn’t have the virus. Williams’ family and his lawyer called over and over to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, pleading with guards and nurses to have him moved to a hospital.
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It was the first time his son had ever heard him cry. “He kept telling me, ‘Son, I’m going to die in here.’” Williams, a 70-year-old diabetic, was serving a life sentence for a 1974 convenience store murder he had always maintained he did not commit. “They weren’t treating him,” his son, Kevin Cooks, recalled. For three days, he had been locked behind the heavy metal door of a cramped prison cell, terrified and alone. His body ached, and he was struggling to breathe. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.īy the time he persuaded the guards to let him call his family, Michael Williams could feel his life slipping away. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.