DOC reports Stafford Creek inmate dies of COVID By Ryan Sparks, The Daily World
Published: December 16, 2020, 8:25am
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ABERDEEN A Stafford Creek Corrections Center inmate died due to COVID-19 on Thursday, the State Department of Corrections said.
“On December 10, 2020, an individual incarcerated at Stafford Creek Corrections Center passed away at a local healthcare facility due to COVID-19 related illness,” the DOC said in a press release.
As of Friday afternoon, the department had released no further details to the public and had not yet responded to questions from The Daily World.
Stafford Creek had not reported a single COVID-related death since the state began tallying pandemic numbers back in March. The facility had reported just four COVID cases over a nine-month span until the virus had infiltrated the facility in late November, causing the overall amount of cases to skyrocket to 242 as of Thursday.
State prison inmates say they re pressured to keep working in midst of coronavirus outbreak yakimaherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yakimaherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Sick inmates at Airway Heights Corrections Center are calling conditions “obscene” and “decaying.” Some have described urine on the floor of a gym where 150 coronavirus-positive inmates are sharing four toilets.
As the prison faces the fastest and largest COVID-19 outbreak in Washington state prisons yet, minimum-security prisoners are still making food in the Washington State Correctional Industries factory for between 90 cents and $1.70 an hour.
Correctional Industries is a state-owned program with “private industry tools” that produces goods, including food, with prison labor to sell mainly to state agencies, according to its website.
Some inmates think that work is part of the reason the virus is spreading rapidly. As of Friday, 792 inmates, more than 40% of the prison’s current population, had tested positive. Twelve days prior, the prison had only seven cases.