Prisoner dies at Chowchilla State Prison, group says it was heat-related

CHOWCHILLA, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – The decease of a captive who was housed astatine Chowchilla's Central California Women’s Facility was owed to a "fully preventable vigor stroke," according to the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP).

However, authorities officials accidental the unidentified prisoner's decease was alternatively owed to "an ongoing aesculapian condition." Prison unit accidental the pistillate was transported to an extracurricular aesculapian installation connected Thursday. According to CBS47's Pinpoint Weather, temperatures successful the country reached 110 degrees that day.

The captive was transported to an extracurricular aesculapian installation connected Thursday and died connected Saturday. A root cited by the CCWP from wrong the situation says the captive who died got into the ablution to chill disconnected and became incoherent, earlier dropping to the crushed and shaking. Members of the CCWP accidental they person been receiving calls and emails from incarcerated women passim the vigor wave.

"There is blistery aerial blowing wrong of our rooms, I person a immense migraine and I consciousness sick and different girls are throwing up," said Trancita Ponce, who is incarcerated astatine Chowchilla's Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). "Please assistance us, they're not doing thing for us."

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) says they volition beryllium providing further water, ice, cooling areas, and accusation to unit and inmates connected ways to forestall heat-related illnesses.

“With progressively deadly vigor waves successful California owed to clime change, CDCR indispensable not lone travel its existing policies but make and instrumentality caller policies that adequately support the wellness and lives of incarcerated people,” said Kelly Savage-Rodriguez, a unit coordinator with CCWP who was incarcerated astatine CCWF for galore years. “Staff negligence and preventable decease is each excessively communal successful CDCR facilities.” 

The CCWP is calling for a broad Public Health investigation. Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation accidental the prisoner's authoritative origin of decease volition beryllium determined by the coroner’s office.