66-year-old man dies in Staton Correctional Facility infirmary
A 66-year-old man died last week in Staton Correctional Facility.
A corrections department official confirmed that Anthony Roy Townson died in the Elmore County prison on Aug. 22. Medical staff found Townson unresponsive in the prison’s infirmary and he was pronounced dead, Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson Kelly Betts said.
The cause of his death awaits the results of an autopsy, Betts said.
An obituary published by Corner Stone Funeral Chapel and Crematory lists Townson’s hometown as Ider, Alabama, a small town in DeKalb County, and court records show he lived in the nearby community of Flat Rock.
According to the obituary, Townson attended Ider High School where he played for the school’s basketball team. After graduating in 1975, he went on to play basketball for Northeast Alabama Community College and Jacksonville State University, the obituary says.
He rooted for the Crimson Tide, though. The obituary describes him as “an avid Alabama fan.”
Before prison, Townson worked for several years as a cable TV installer, according to the obituary.
Of Alabama’s 10 medium security prisons, Staton is the most over capacity. In June, the facility designed with a capacity of 508 people held 1,378 — a 271.3% occupancy rate.
Staton also confirmed the most deaths among medium security prisons in Alabama through the first eight months of the fiscal year. Twelve men died there from October to June, according to the department’s most recent monthly report.
Across the prison system, 149 people died behind bar’s during the same period.
More:Family of man who died in an Alabama prison was afraid he'd 'never make it out alive'
The treatment of Alabama’s prisoners remains the subject of several lawsuits, including one brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020. In it the DOJ writes that Alabama fails to protect its incarcerated citizens from violence and sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions in its prisons and subjects the incarcerated to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Staton Correctional Facility: Man dies in prison infirmary
