 |
Friday, July 30, 2010 | Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County: Since 1929
|
|
|
Marketplace
Sections
AP News
Service Center
|
|
| |
|
Jail rumors addressed
Published August 18, 2007
Several persistent rumors about deaths and illness at the county jail were addressed by state health authorities Friday.
No one at the jail has died or has been hospitalized as the result of a beating, no jailers or other jail or sheriff’s office staff are sick and there is no tuberculosis “outbreak” at the facility, Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu, Region 8 Health Director and state health authority for Val Verde County, said Friday.
The Del Rio News-Herald contacted Guerra-Cantu Friday and asked her to address several rumors the newspaper has received since the report that two men who were former inmates of the jail died at Val Verde Regional Medical Center in late July and the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office, the GEO Group and the Texas Department of State Health Services opened an investigation.
The newspaper has received telephone calls and mail about the subject.
One of the letters received, read, in part, as follows:
“We find out [sic] that a jail inmate died at Val Verde Regional (Medical) Center after a fight at the local county jail. There has been nothing in the news about this. Some are throwing to the wind that he died of illness but when in reality it was a fight,” the unsigned, typewritten note read.
“Whether there is an investigation or not, something to the effect should be told. Thank God it wasn’t from a prominent family. . .then there would be hell to pay,” the note concluded.
“We didn’t discover any evidence to support that idea,” Guerra-Cantu said Friday.
She said that the official cause of death of the first fatality at the jail, listed as “cardio-pulmonary arrest following illness,” was “non-traumatic.”
A male caller who did not identify himself called Staff Writer Jennifer Killin Wednesday to tell her that a female relative of his was employed at the jail and that his female relative had told him that two jailers who work at the facility have fallen ill since the start of the investigation.
“We have been very fortunate. The last case of illness was the fourth illness we talked about last week. Nobody else has been brought to our attention,” Guerra-Cantu said.
Another rumor making its way around town is that the two men who died at the end of July, died as the result of an outbreak of tuberculosis at the facility.
Guerra-Cantu said tuberculosis is “always a concern” at correctional facilities.
“It’s a concern in any correctional facilities, especially in correctional facilities that hold inmates from countries where tuberculosis is present,” Guerra-Cantu said.
She said of the illnesses at the jail, “I can’t tell you it isn’t tuberculosis,” and added, “The presence of tuberculosis is almost expected in any correctional facility.”
Guerra-Cantu said she and state and federal health authorities investigating the four illnesses at the jail may issue a public statement on their findings at the jail as early as next week.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
