Tormented Souls, Part Three by Lonnie Smith

The people in custody inside of Stateville cannot infect themselves with the virus. It can only be brought into the insitution by the the staff. The staff used reckless abandonment when they hosted a Christmas party for its employees, knowing the omicron virus was spreading rapidly. They chose fun over the safety over the people they oversee. The silence of the heavily infected staff only came out when there was a shortage of staff at the prison this how we found out it was an outbreak in the prison guards. From then each week a list comes out with infected (inmate) workers, I work among twenty guys daily and sixteen of them came up positive and I am the oldest among them and in poorer health due to age and weight. The new term around here is a person with the virus is "hot," so and so tested "hot." I don't want to be on the hot sheet but it looks like its enviable, because none of the people that have tested positive have been moved away from us that came up negative. Their gambling with our lives and I pray that I can escape death when the virus will no doubtly be passed to me because I can't run from, protect myself from it and the people who have control over my body show lack of concern of me getting. We feel like we're apart of an social experiment and we're the live guinea pigs that are aware of whats going on but can't control our fate it is in someone else's band and we can only hope for the best. I've never been around a group of men that are so afraid and scared, we're making peace with loves ones , friends, family and victims of our crimes. We feel death is right around the corner, 2020 is haunting us again and we wonder what the death toll will be this time. We need help from the outside because we have no voice and no support in here. We need people to raise up like they did for George Floyd, because our protest is muzzled like his last breath.

Live from Stateville and praying these are not my last words.
Lonnie Smith B00708

​About the author: Lonnie Smith B00708, he's 56 years old and has been incarcerated for 33 long years and suffers from high blood pressure.