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Protesters call for release of inmates at risk of COVID at Fort Worth federal prison

Fort Worth Star-Telegram - 8/2/2020

Aug. 2--Like many of the inmates at Federal Medical Center Carswell, Yolanda McDow is in poor health.

She has high blood pressure, asthma and has been an above-the-knee amputee since she lost her leg in a vehicle crash before her conviction 11 years ago in connection with a series of Dallas-area bank robberies in which she was a lookout.

McDow is 54 and a grandmother.

As the coronavirus churned through the west Fort Worth prison in the spring, McDow filed in U.S. District Court a motion seeking compassionate release. She wrote that she was housed with five to seven other inmates, a circumstance that did not allow for social distancing. Guards "are not all using their mask, nor regularly wearing gloves, especially when [handing] items to inmates," she wrote.

The court denied McDow's motion, and she pursued release via the Bureau of Prisons. That request was declined because her conviction involved an act of violence, Deangela Merida, a cousin, said Saturday outside the prison.

McDow and the other women in her unit were tested for COVID-19 and all were told that their tests were negative, she wrote in a letter.

McDow is glum. Her mother died in January, and her request to attend the service was denied. The pandemic's threat has made McDow's release critical, Merida said.

"What I know is she is already broken down," Merida said.

McDow expects now that she will be released, perhaps in November, to a halfway house, a plan that had been on track before the coronavirus emerged. In the longer term, she plans to live with her father.

Merida was one of about 15 people who demonstrated Saturday evening outside FMC Carswell, one of two federal medical prisons in Fort Worth, to call for the release of inmates whose health they said was imperiled by the novel coronavirus.

"You are not forgotten. You are not alone," they chanted. "We will fight to bring you home."

The coronavirus has inflamed low-grade conditions at the prison that have long existed, said Jordan Mazurek, the national prison closing coordinator at the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.

"It was a hellhole long before COVID happened," he said.

Inmates' access to computers, needed to complete compassionate release documents, has been limited, Mazurek said. His organization expects to donate to the prison masks and soap.

McDow worked with six men in 21 takeover-style bank robberies in 2007 and 2008.

Nicknamed the Scarecrow Bandits because of the loose shirts and floppy hats that they wore during the first robberies, the men later dressed mostly in black and donned face masks, gloves and body armor.

They carried handguns, semiautomatic rifles and stun guns.

McDow, who pleaded guilty and testified at a trial against the men with whom she worked, was sentenced in December 2009 to nearly 16 years in prison.

Three inmates have died of the novel coronavirus at FMC Carswell. About 550 women have tested positive, and 244 inmates and two members of its staff had active positive cases on Sunday, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Teresa Ely, 51, died on July 20, the Bureau of Prisons said.

She was sentenced in Virginia to 252 months in prison for engaging in a criminal enterprise and had been at FMC Carswell since September 2007.

Sandra Kincaid, 69, died on July 14.

On April 28, FMC Carswell inmate Andrea Circle Bear was the first woman in the country to die from the virus while in federal custody. She was 30 and died about a month after she delivered a baby by cesarean section.

Each of the inmates who died had long-term medical conditions that put them at risk of developing more serious COVID-19 symptoms.

On Saturday, during the hourlong demonstration at the prison's edge, protesters faced fences topped with coiled razor.

"Can you hear us?" a woman asked into a bullhorn.

It was not clear that anyone did.

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