Growing up, Matt Santana and Savion Hall were inseparable. The two met in middle school while hanging out with mutual friends in Midland, a West Texas oil town. After realizing they lived on the same block, Hall, a year younger than Santana, started sleeping over so they could play video games late into the night. As they got older, Hall and Santana remained dear friends, often turning to each other for help. Santana, who suffers from anxiety, says Hall sometimes spent hours by his side helping calm him down. “He would stay with me until I felt better, whether it was just driving around, listening to music or talking,” he says. When Hall had asthma attacks, Santana would make sure he got his breathing treatments, which included inhalers and nebulizers, sometimes taking him to the hospital three or four times a month. The two looked out for each other. “It was special having a friend like that since childhood,” Santana says. “I was hoping we would grow old together.”
Then Hall was arrested and taken to the Midland County jail last summer. Court records show that he was accused of failing to wear a GPS monitor and testing positive for amphetamines—violations of the probation agreement he’d signed with the local district attorney’s office to resolve a drug possession charge earlier that year. Nearly three weeks after Hall entered lockup for the alleged probation violations, jail doctors shipped him to a local hospital due to breathing problems and low oxygen levels, according to a report filed with the Texas Attorney General’s office.
