NC prison ravaged by COVID loses its two top leaders in less than two weeks

Ames Alexander

It has been a brutal month for Tabor Correctional Institution.

Located west of Wilmington, Tabor has experienced the worst COVID-19 outbreak of any North Carolina prison, with more than 670 inmates and staff members testing positive so far. Over the past 15 days, the prison’s two top leaders have died.

One of them — associate warden Julian Priest, a 29-year veteran of the state prison system — died from coronavirus complications on Dec. 24, his son confirmed.

The prison’s warden, 46-year-old Brad Perritt, also died, on Dec. 15. Prison officials did not disclose the cause of Perritt’s death, saying they can’t discuss the medical issues of employees.

Brad Perritt
Brad Perritt
Julian Priest, an associate warden at Tabor Correctional Institution, had spent nearly three decades working for the North Carolina prison system and was looking forward to retiring next year. But the pandemic dashed those plans.
Julian Priest, an associate warden at Tabor Correctional Institution, had spent nearly three decades working for the North Carolina prison system and was looking forward to retiring next year. But the pandemic dashed those plans.

As the coronavirus intensifies its assault on North Carolina, the head of the state employees association this week sharply criticized state prison leaders, saying they’ve failed to take key steps to curb the spread of the virus inside penal institutions.

“Listening to the experts, we are in a critical stage of this disease,” Ardis Watkins, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, told the Charlotte Observer. “But for whatever reason, we’re not behaving as though things are as bad as they are. And things are going to end badly.”

Across North Carolina, the coronavirus has claimed the lives of 32 prison inmates, and at least seven staff members.

Most of the state’s roughly 60 prisons have now experienced outbreaks. More than 7,400 inmates — roughly one of every five tested — have contracted the virus, according to state Department of Public Safety data. Of the 14,100 prison employees, 2,365 have reported testing positive for COVID-19, DPS spokesman John Bull said Tuesday.

Tabor, which houses about 1,400 inmates, has been particularly hard hit. Since the pandemic erupted, more than 560 inmates there have tested positive, with most of those cases surfacing in November and December. Two of those prisoners have died.

Of the 510 staff members at Tabor, 110 have reported testing positive, Bull said. By Tuesday, the majority of them had recovered, but 48 remained off the job, Bull said.

Now the job of running Tabor falls to a new man: associate warden Jamie Bullard.

‘Protecting all of us’

Watkins, the employee association director, noted that state leaders continue to transfer many inmates and staff members from prison to prison, moves that she says increase the likelihood the virus will be spread.

“If the governor is encouraging individuals to stay in their homes, it seems we’d be rational enough to shut down the movements in our prison system,” Watkins said.

The state prisons sharply limited inmate transfers in April and May. But those transfers later resumed. Watkins questions why.

“The people we talk to in the prison system are more fearful each day,” Watkins said. “And they have reason to be.”

At one prison wrestling with a recent outbreak — Alexander Correctional Institution, north of Charlotte — prisoners and family members are asking why officials created the risk of a larger outbreak by moving infected inmates to a dorm with uninfected people.

Prisons are breeding grounds for viruses, because inmates live so close together. But Bull said prison leaders have been vigilant in their efforts to contain the coronavirus.

All inmates are tested before they’re transferred, and they’re quarantined for 14 days immediately afterward, Bull said. Staff members are tested every two weeks. Prison leaders have also intensified their cleaning regimens and issued protective equipment to all, Bull said.

“This is a substantial effort and it’s intended to do the best possible job to protect staff and the offender population,” he said.

An inmate sews a surgical mask inside Tabor Correctional Institution. As the coronavirus spread this past spring, the need for personal protective equipment became so acute that the North Carolina prisons turned to inmates to manufacture it.
An inmate sews a surgical mask inside Tabor Correctional Institution. As the coronavirus spread this past spring, the need for personal protective equipment became so acute that the North Carolina prisons turned to inmates to manufacture it.

Watkins noted that healthcare workers are getting recognition for the risks they take on behalf of the public. Prison employees deserve that, too, she said.

“They’re doing a job as dangerous as any out there,” she said. “These individuals are protecting all of us, every day. And they matter.”

‘He went downhill very fast’

At 57, Julian Priest had much to look forward to. The Marine Corps veteran loved to travel, watch NASCAR races and root for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Above all, he loved to spend time with family, his son, Jeremiah, said. He had plenty to talk about with his wife, who works as a top official at another N.C. prison. He had three children and four grandchildren, but he couldn’t visit with them as much as he would like this year because he didn’t want to run the risk of spreading the coronavirus, his son said.

“He always put other people first,” Jeremiah Priest said.

After nearly three decades with the state prison system, Julian Priest was looking forward to retiring in 2021, his son said.

But the pandemic dashed those plans.

On Dec. 22, he tested positive for COVID-19, his son said. The next day, suffering from a fever, chills and breathing problems, he was hospitalized. And the day after that, he died.

“He went downhill very fast,” his son said.

Jeremiah Priest said the family isn’t sure how his father caught the virus, but “we assume something happened at the prison.”

Priest coached prison employees to wear clean masks, to wash their hands frequently, and to keep their distance from others, his son said.

“He always wanted everybody to be safe. He wanted everybody to go home to their families.”

Jeremiah Priest said one good thing has come from this: In the days since his father died, more people at the prison have begun taking his advice to heart.

Latest Stories

  • Trump put Senate Republicans in a real jam. But McConnell might have a way out.

    The president said GOP lawmakers have a "death wish" if they don't OK $2,000 stimulus checks.

  • Vaccinated US nurse contracts COVID-19, expert says Pfizer shot needed more time to work - ABC

    Matthew W., 45, a nurse at two different local hospitals, said in a Facebook post on December 18 that he had received the Pfizer vaccine, telling the ABC News affiliate that his arm was sore for a day but that he had suffered no other side-effects. He went to a drive-up hospital testing site and tested positive for COVID-19 the day after Christmas, the report said. Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist with Family Health Centers of San Diego, told the ABC News affiliate that this scenario was not unexpected.

  • US says it won't allow Pearl murder suspect to evade justice

    The U.S. warned Wednesday it won’t allow a Pakistani man who was convicted and later acquitted in the 2002 murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl to evade justice after a provincial court in Pakistan ordered his release. The warning from acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen comes days after the Sindh High Court in Pakistan's south overturned a government detention order that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the key suspect in Pearl’s slaying, should remain in custody. Sheikh was convicted for his role in helping lure Pearl in January 2002 to a meeting in the city of Karachi, during which he was kidnapped.

  • Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved

    The Second Amendment is one of the most frequently cited provisions in the American Constitution, but also one of the most poorly understood. The 27 words that constitute the Second Amendment seem to baffle modern Americans on both the left and right. Ironically, those on both ends of our contemporary political spectrum cast the Second Amendment as a barrier to robust gun regulation. Gun rights supporters – mostly, but not exclusively, on the right – seem to believe that the Second Amendment prohibits many forms of gun regulation. On the left, frustration with the lack of progress on modern gun control leads to periodic calls for the amendment’s repeal.Both of these beliefs ignore an irrefutable historical truth. The framers and adopters of the Second Amendment were generally ardent supporters of the idea of well-regulated liberty. Without strong governments and effective laws, they believed, liberty inevitably degenerated into licentiousness and eventually anarchy. Diligent students of history, particularly Roman history, the Federalists who wrote the Constitution realized that tyranny more often resulted from anarchy, not strong government. I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations. Consider these five categories of gun laws that the Founders endorsed. 1: RegistrationToday American gun rights advocates typically oppose any form of registration – even though such schemes are common in every other industrial democracy – and typically argue that registration violates the Second Amendment. This claim is also hard to square with the history of the nation’s founding. All of the colonies – apart from Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, the one colony in which religious pacifists blocked the creation of a militia – enrolled local citizens, white men between the ages of 16-60 in state-regulated militias. The colonies and then the newly independent states kept track of these privately owned weapons required for militia service. Men could be fined if they reported to a muster without a well-maintained weapon in working condition. 2: Public carryThe modern gun rights movement has aggressively pursued the goal of expanding the right to carry firearms in public. The American colonies inherited a variety of restrictions that evolved under English Common Law. In 18th-century England, armed travel was limited to a few well-defined occasions such as assisting justices of the peace and constables. Members of the upper classes also had a limited exception to travel with arms. Concealable weapons such as handguns were subject to even more stringent restrictions. The city of London banned public carry of these weapons entirely.The American Revolution did not sweep away English common law. In fact, most colonies adopted common law as it had been interpreted in the colonies prior to independence, including the ban on traveling armed in populated areas. Thus, there was no general right of armed travel when the Second Amendment was adopted, and certainly no right to travel with concealed weapons. Such a right first emerged in the United States in the slave South decades after the Second Amendment was adopted. The market revolution of the early 19th century made cheap and reliable hand guns readily available. Southern murder rates soared as a result. In other parts of the nation, the traditional English restrictions on traveling armed persisted with one important change. American law recognized an exception to this prohibition for individuals who had a good cause to fear an imminent threat. Nonetheless, by the end of the century, prohibiting public carry was the legal norm, not the exception. 3: Stand-your-ground lawsUnder traditional English common law, one had a duty to retreat, not stand your ground. Deadly force was justified only if no other alternative was possible. One had to retreat, until retreat was no longer possible, before killing an aggressor. The use of deadly force was justified only in the home, where retreat was not required under the so-called castle doctrine, or the idea that “a man’s home is his castle.” The emergence of a more aggressive view of the right of self-defense in public, standing your ground, emerged slowly in the decades after the Civil War. 4: Safe storage lawsAlthough some gun rights advocates attempt to demonize government power, it is important to recognize that one of the most important rights citizens enjoy is the freedom to elect representatives who can enact laws to promote health and public safety. This is the foundation for the idea of ordered liberty. The regulation of gun powder and firearms arises from an exercise of this basic liberty. In 1786, Boston acted on this legal principle, prohibiting the storage of a loaded firearm in any domestic dwelling in the city. Guns had to be kept unloaded, a practice that made sense since the black powder used in firearms in this period was corrosive. Loaded guns also posed a particular hazard in cases of fire because they might discharge and injure innocent bystanders and those fighting fires. 5: Loyalty oathsOne of the most common claims one hears in the modern Second Amendment debate is the assertion that the Founders included this provision in the Constitution to make possible a right of revolution. But this claim, too, rests on a serious misunderstanding of the role the right to bear arms played in American constitutional theory. In fact, the Founders engaged in large-scale disarmament of the civilian population during the American Revolution. The right to bear arms was conditional on swearing a loyalty oath to the government. Individuals who refused to swear such an oath were disarmed. The notion that the Second Amendment was understood to protect a right to take up arms against the government is absurd. Indeed, the Constitution itself defines such an act as treason. Gun regulation and gun ownership have always existed side by side in American history. The Second Amendment poses no obstacle to enacting sensible gun laws. The failure to do so is not the Constitution’s fault; it is ours.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Read more: * Why Trump’s idea to arm teachers may miss the mark * How US gun control compares to the rest of the world * How dangerous people get their weapons in AmericaAs a researcher at the John Glenn School of Public Policy at Ohio State, Cornell was the lead investigator on a project that was funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation to research the history of gun regulation. Part of the research cited in this essay was done under that grant.

  • Trump news – live: President files Supreme Court election challenge, and says GOP has ‘death wish’ to defy him

    Live updates from the White House and beyond

  • The 7 Best Airbnbs in Los Angeles

    From an airy Venice loft to a romantic Topanga getaway, these vacation homes offer something for every traveler Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Iran allocates $150,000 for families of victims of Ukraine plane crash

    Describing Iran's handling of the situation as "unacceptable", Ukraine said the amount of compensation should be negotiated and called for those responsible to be brought to justice. An Iranian government statement said: "The cabinet approved the provision of $150,000 or the equivalent in euros as soon as possible to the families and survivors of each of the victims of the Ukrainian plan crash," IRNA reported.

  • Hong Kongers charged in China plead guilty, relatives told

    Relatives of the 10 Hong Kongers accused of fleeing the city by speedboat during a government crackdown on dissent say they've been informed that their family members pleaded guilty, according to a support group. The families of the detainees were informed by court-appointed lawyers Tuesday that a court in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will deliver the verdicts on Wednesday, according to the 12 Hongkongers Concern Group, which is assisting the families. The 10 defendants all faced charges of illegally crossing the border, while two of them faced additional charges of organizing the attempt, according to an indictment issued in Shenzhen.

  • Hawley Says He Will Object to Electoral College Certification

    Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said Wednesday he plans to object during the Electoral College certification process when a joint session of Congress meets on January 6.“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws," Hawley said in a statement. "And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden. At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. But Congress has so far failed to act."He noted that in the 2004 and 2016 elections, Congressional Democrats objected to the certification of electoral votes over election integrity concerns and were "praised by Democratic leadership and the media.""And they were entitled to do so," he said. "But now those of us concerned about the integrity of this election are entitled to do the same." “For these reasons, I will follow the same practice Democrat members of Congress have in years past and object during the certification process on January 6 to raise these critical issues," he concluded.Hawley's statement comes days after Representative Mo Brooks (R., Ala.) said Monday that “dozens” of House Republicans may object to the Electoral College results.Brooks claimed there is “overwhelming” and “compelling” evidence of “serious voter fraud and election theft” in the election, which President-elect Joe Biden won with 306 electoral votes to President Trump’s 232 votes.“There are dozens in the House of Representatives who have reached that conclusion, as I have,” Brooks said in an appearance on Fox & Friends. “We’re going to sponsor and co-sponsor objections to the Electoral College vote returns of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and maybe more depending on where we collectively want to go.”Senate Republican leaders had cautioned their members against joining the effort. Hawley's support will allow the objection to be heard and debated, as House members needed backing from at least one senator for the objection to be acknowledged.

  • A year since Covid emerged, Americans in Wuhan are afraid again — for the U.S.

    "I would be very afraid if I were living in the States," Benjamin Wilson, an American who has lived in Wuhan for almost two decades, said.

  • Twenty killed in attack on Aden airport moments after new Yemen cabinet lands

    At least 20 people were killed and dozens wounded in an attack on Aden airport on Wednesday moments after a plane landed carrying a newly formed Saudi-backed cabinet for government-held parts of Yemen. Hours after the attack, a second explosion was heard around Aden's Maasheq presidential palace where the cabinet members including Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik, as well as the Saudi ambassador to Yemen, had been taken to safely, residents and local media said. In the airport attack, loud blasts and gunfire were heard shortly after the plane arrived from Riyadh, witnesses said.

  • Wisconsin prosecutors add curfew charge against Rittenhouse

    Prosecutors have charged a 17-year-old Illinois teen accused of shooting three people during a protest in southeastern Wisconsin this summer with violating curfew that night. Kyle Rittenhouse was charged in August with multiple counts, including reckless and intentional homicide, endangerment and being a minor in possession of a firearm. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that prosecutors added violating curfew the night of the shootings to the list of charges on Monday.

  • Joe Biden refers to Kamala Harris as ‘president-elect’

    Incoming president slipped-up as he issued criticism of the Trump administration’s vaccine roll-out

  • How a Vindictive Classmate and a Cowardly University Ruined a Girl’s Life

    ‘ARacial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning”That’s how the New York Times headlined its hit piece on a college freshman for something she had said as a high school freshman. Mimi Groves was still a child when she said, in a Snapchat recording, “I can drive” followed by the “n-word” -- the racial slur.Jimmy Galligan, a half-black student who graduated from Heritage High School in Virginia this past spring with Groves, obtained this video during their senior year. Per Galligan himself, he waited until Groves had been accepted to, and chose to enroll at, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville to release the video -- which went viral.The resulting firestorm led to a torrent of abuse, and to an ultimatum from the University of Tennessee to Groves: withdraw voluntarily or have your offer of admission rescinded. Groves, who is white, chose the former and is now taking courses at a local community college instead of at her dream school -- the reckoning.Should the former two have led to the third on the scale that Groves is now facing? Any reasonable person would say no. Even conceding the obvious -- she shouldn’t have used that slur in any context -- there’s little indication she used it out of hatred for black people. In fact, the context seems clear: Groves said it casually, as hundreds of hip-hop tracks do every year. That doesn’t excuse the behavior, which should be considered unacceptable. But it is an important distinction from using the slur with animus, which was obviously not her intention.There are many to blame for what’s happened. If Groves can be held responsible for a poor decision rendered in her mid teens, surely Galligan can be as well for deliberately trying to ruin a classmate’s life four years later -- a worse crime at a more mature age. But regardless of Galligan’s culpability, institutions such as the University of Tennessee and the New York Times are far more deserving of scorn than either of these Virginia teens.At the university, cowardice won the day. Facing calls on social media for Groves’s acceptance to be rescinded, administrators bowed to pressure from a vocal minority, forgoing what was right to do what was most convenient. It was easier for university officials to hang Groves out to dry than to withstand the intense but brief storm themselves. So that’s what they did.Their decision had nothing to do with racial or any other kind of justice. They didn’t care if Groves would feel “comfortable on campus” -- language they used to persuade her to withdraw prior to handing her the ultimatum -- and they didn’t honestly believe that black students on campus would be at risk were she to enroll. The only thing that mattered to them was escaping the situation with as little effort and scrutiny as possible. Forget taking a stand and explaining why they wouldn’t punish a young woman for a mistake she made as a child. It was all about damage control. I wonder how many of us would ultimately qualify for acceptance to the University of Tennessee were we held to the same standard as Mimi Groves from our freshman years of high school onward.And at the Times, disgraceful (yet now familiar) behavior also won out. To signal approval of Galligan’s behavior to readers without outright endorsing it, Dan Levin, the article’s author, notes that Galligan had “made a decision that would ricochet across Leesburg, Va., a town named for an ancestor of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee and whose school system had fought an order to desegregate for more than a decade after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling.” The ridiculous implication is that the name of Groves’s town and its opposition to integration over 50 years ago justified her treatment.Levin adds that “the story behind the backlash also reveals a more complex portrait of behavior that for generations had gone unchecked in schools in one of the nation’s wealthiest counties, where Black students said they had long been subjected to ridicule” before going on to share the stories of students who were forced to endure appalling racist treatment by their classmates or even have “Underground Railroad” games forced on them in gym class. As maddening as these stories are, they describe people guilty of far worse than Groves’s offense. Levin’s attempt to blur the lines between her case and more damning ones is contemptible -- or worse.Levin also records an anecdote from Galligan that helpfully illuminates just how wrong what Galligan did was:> Mr. Galligan thinks a lot about race, and the implications of racial slurs. He said his father was often the only white person at maternal family gatherings, where “the N-word is a term that is thrown around sometimes” by Black relatives. A few years ago, he said his father said it aloud, prompting Mr. Galligan and his sister to quietly take him aside and explain that it was unacceptable, even when joking around.Just a few paragraphs later:> For his role, Mr. Galligan said he had no regrets. “If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened,” he said. And because the internet never forgets, the clip will always be available to watch.> > “I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” he said with satisfaction. “You taught someone a lesson.”For his father, Galligan calmly explained why using slurs -- even casually -- is wrong. For Groves, he summoned national opprobrium on her and her family and denied her the opportunity to attend her dream school. Those that are so unforgiving as to seek this retribution, so cowardly as to grant it, and so dishonest as to excuse it are broken.

  • Gaza militants fire rockets into the sea in first joint exercise

    An array of Palestinian militant groups launched rockets into the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza Strip on Tuesday at the start of what they called their first-ever joint exercise, which Israeli media described as a show of force organised by Iran. Gaza is run by Hamas and also home to other militant groups, including Islamic Jihad.

  • Officers connected to Taylor's death could face dismissal

    Louisville police have taken steps that could result in the firing of two officers connected to Breonna Taylor's death — the one who sought the no-knock search warrant that led detectives to her apartment and another found to have opened fire. Detective Joshua Jaynes received a pretermination letter, media outlets reported Tuesday. It came after a Professional Standards Unit investigation found he had violated department procedures for preparation of a search warrant and truthfulness, his attorney said.

  • Lawyer says Army sergeant arrested in Illinois bowling alley shooting may have PTSD

    An attorney for a U.S. Army special forces sergeant arrested in what authorities called an apparently random shooting at an Illinois bowling alley that left three people dead told an initial hearing Monday that her client may suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder.

  • Luke Letlow: Elected Congressman dies aged 41 after contracting Covid

    Luke Letlow is the first lawmaker to have died from the coronavirus

  • What my grandfather's life taught me about China and America

    Vincent Ni reflects on the long life of his grandfather and a crucial choice he made as a young man.

  • Turkey, U.S. in talks to form joint working group on S-400s, sanctions -minister

    Turkey and the United States have started talks to form a joint working group regarding U.S. sanctions imposed over Ankara's purchase of Russian S-400 missile defence systems, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday. Washington slapped the sanctions on NATO ally Turkey's Defence Industry Directorate (SSB), its chief Ismail Demir and three other employees this month following its acquisition of the S-400s.