Two more inmates die from COVID at NC prison that saw large outbreak last month
Two more inmates have died at a prison north of Charlotte that saw one of North Carolina’s largest COVID-19 outbreaks.
One of the prisoners at Alexander Correctional Institution was a man in his late 50s who died Dec. 29, state officials said. Prison officials didn’t identify him.
The other — 73-year-old Vietnam War veteran Doyle Helms — died Dec. 31. Helms, a minimum security inmate, had been scheduled for release at the end of March.
Both men had underlying health problems, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
More than 300 inmates at Alexander Correctional have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Since November, a total of four inmates there have died from complications due to the coronavirus.
Located in Taylorsville, in Alexander County, the prison houses roughly 1,100 inmates, many of them older men with health conditions.
More than 100 inmates at the prison contracted COVID-19 in December. On the heels of that outbreak, inmates and family members contended the prison created the risk of spreading the virus by moving infected inmates to a minimum-security dorm with people who did not have the virus.
On Dec. 20, about seven prisoners at Alexander Correctional were moved from one minimum-security dorm that had experienced a coronavirus outbreak to another dorm that had not, at least eight inmates and family members told the Charlotte Observer.
The next day, prisons officials did rapid tests on the inmates who’d been moved. At least six tested positive for the coronavirus, the inmates and family members said.
In prisons across North Carolina, more than 7,600 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, according to state Department of Public Safety data. That amounts to roughly one of every five inmates tested.
Thirty six state prison inmates have died from COVID-19 complications since the pandemic started. At least seven staff members have also died.
Prison officials say they’ve taken extensive precautions to prevent the virus from spreading at Alexander and other prisons. Alexander Correctional has just two active cases of COVID-19 now, according to DPS data.
That’s little consolation to Monroe resident Amanda Wooten. Her father, Doyle Helms, got COVID-19 soon after he was transferred to Alexander Correctional.
Prison officials transferred Helms, a native of Monroe, from Central Prison on Nov. 23, the day after an inmate there died from COVID-19. His daughter says she feels he would have been safer if he’d been left at Central Prison.
“I think they failed us,” Wooten said. “I think they failed the prisoners. I think they took (the pandemic) seriously, but I don’t think they took it as seriously as they could have.”
In a typical week, more than 300 inmates are transferred from one prison to another, according to an analysis of state data by a lawyer at N.C. Prisoner Legal Services. Critics, including the ACLU and the head of the state employees association, contend that those transfers raise the risk that the coronavirus will be spread.
State prison officials say they transfer inmates for a variety of reasons, including the safety of prisoners and the need to accommodate inmates who are changing custody levels. All inmates are tested before they’re transferred, and they’re quarantined for 14 days immediately afterward, prison officials say.
On Dec. 7, Helms was hospitalized for COVID-19. A nurse at Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory said he had a fever and was struggling to catch his breath, his daughter said. By the third day in the hospital, Helms had been put on a ventilator. But his condition deteriorated, and with his wife’s permission, he was taken off the ventilator on Dec. 30.
His wife, daughter and granddaughter were able to visit him that day. Helms opened his eyes briefly when he was taken off the ventilator, Wooten said. But he died the next day.
This story was originally published January 4, 2021 at 4:17 PM.
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