Two wardens have been replaced, one at the Wallens Ridge Correctional Center where 27-year-old inmate Aubrey McKay died last summer under mysterious circumstances. His mother, Stacy Carter, got a call from the Wise County coroner, who described his injuries.
“The head trauma he had, the black eye he had, the bruises on his arms and his ankles from the handcuffed and the shackles. She said that he also had a fractured Adam’s apple, and she wasn’t happy about that, so she opened up an investigation.”
A few weeks before, he had told his mom that prison guards at the facility didn’t like him and called him names.
“They used to say racist slurs to him, and it used to make him very angry, but he was trying to hold himself together, because he wanted to come home, Carter recalled.
McKay – who had served ten years in prison – was supposed to be released last July – on his 28th birthday. Relatives, who looked forward to seeing him again, were – instead – planning his funeral.
Brian Mitchell, a correctional officer for more than 20 years, says guards at Wallens Ridge did sometimes beat up prisoners,
“You know I was in there 22 years – never happened to me, but you hear things.”
And rather than discipline them, management dismissed claims of abuse.
“The department will cover up incidents. They will manipulate staff. They want to keep everything in house. I know that goes on for a fact. That’s kind of one reason I’m not in the department anymore. I had evidence of a unit manager choking an inmate in 2018, and I reported it, and it immediately got covered up, and eventually I was retaliated against."
The state says its investigation of McKay’s death – which began nine months ago – is still underway.
On the other hand, charges were quickly filed against a prisoner at the River North Correctional Center for the murder of guard Jeremy Hall.
Months before the attack, former lieutenant Jacob Murray resigned, telling Warden Kevin McCoy that he and other staffers worried that the prison was “headed down a dangerous path that would see staff severely injured if not killed. I won’t be part of such a grave failure in oversight,” he wrote.
One reason for his concern – understaffing that remains a problem according to former guard Brian Mitchell.
“The western region has actually been pulling four officers per week from Bland Correctional Center to work at River North. Bland is a low-level facility. It’s a farm. River North is just the opposite. Some of the officers from Bland are upset."
Mitchell says the death of Officer Hall prompted a number of guards to quit.
"That’s obviously a detriment to morale and a detriment to the facility. You’re going to have people leave. They kind of re-evaluate their career choice and decide to move on."
Warden McCoy has now been replaced.
The officer who lost his life – Jeremy Hall – is survived by his widow. Dawn, who is now suing the department. She says her husband was the target of a foiled attack four months earlier, but he was assigned to the same pod where he had been threatened before.
At headquarters in Richmond, two other executives are out -- the man in charge of all prisons in the western region of Virginia and the deputy director of institutions.
