For more than a week, 60-year-old Willis Darby was pretty sure he had COVID-19: He was congested and suffering from headaches at the Bastrop County Jail where he is incarcerated.
Then, Winter Storm Uri hit. The heater broke, he said, and staff brought him an extra blanket to help stave off the cold. The jail lost running water last Tuesday, and Darby said he spent the day without any water to drink. He struggled to breathe, and sometimes blood came out when he blew his nose. “My whole body hurts,” he said. “It’s scary.” He put in requests for Ibuprofen to alleviate his symptoms. It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that he finally got some medication, he said. With no way to flush the toilets, Darby said staff gave inmates pieces of cardboard to cover them, in an effort to contain the smell and overflow. The Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
“I kept thinking it can’t get worse, it can’t get worse,” says Krish Gundu, executive director of Texas Jail Project, an advocacy group that’s been tracking conditions inside Texas jails since last March. “I don’t know why we thought it couldn’t get worse.”
