Man in jail custody underwent an emergency procedure on Thanksgiving. His family hasn’t heard from him since.

UPDATE: After this article was published Thursday evening, Lonnie Wilfork’s mother, Bernice Thomas-Johnson, said she received a call from her son following his transport from Riverside Regional Medical Center to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, in Portsmouth. We are working to verify additional details about his current condition.

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NEWPORT NEWS — A doctor called Lonnie Wilfork’s wife about 5:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving, saying he was about to go into “emergency surgery” at Riverside Regional Medical Center.

Wilfork had been in the custody of the Newport News City Jail awaiting a hearing on a probation violation, but had been suffering from a flare-up of diverticulitis in recent weeks.

Jean Wilfork immediately drove to the hospital — getting there within 40 minutes — wanting to know how it went.

“I thought I’d just wait in the lobby to hear back from the doctor,” she said.

But when she asked for the surgeon who had called her earlier, she was told she couldn’t talk to him. Two Riverside security guards and a man she believes was a Newport News police officer soon kicked her out of the hospital lobby.

“I asked ‘Can I talk to the doctor?’” she said. “They said no. I said ‘Can I speak to someone else?’ And they said they can’t tell me anything.”

She hasn’t heard from her husband since.

For the past two weeks, Jean and her mother-in-law, Bernice Thomas-Johnson, have been frantically trying to find out how Lonnie’s operation went.

But they’ve been rebuffed at every turn.

The Riverside security guards, she said, told her to call the Newport News City Jail for more information, which she did early the next morning. Jean Wilfork said she eventually reached a “Nurse Johnson,” but the only thing she learned was that her husband was still alive at Riverside.

“She said he’s ‘OK and aware,’” Jean Wilfork said of the nurse. “That’s all they’re saying — ‘he’s OK and aware.’”

The nurse told her that because Lonnie didn’t sign a “release” before his emergency surgery, there was nothing more she could say. His wife said she doesn’t know what kind of “release” the nurse was referring to.

“She said that when he’s able to call, he’ll give me a call,” Jean Wilfork said. “But he hasn’t called yet.”

A 1996 federal law — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — restricts the release of patients’ private medical information. A patient, however, can authorize release by way of a signed waiver.

A spokesperson for the hospital system would not say whether that federal law, widely referred to as “HIPAA,” is the reason Riverside isn’t keeping the family informed.

On Thursday, Jean Wilfork said a Newport News sheriff’s sergeant told her “a security issue” was actually what prevented her husband from making or receiving calls, though he didn’t elaborate. While calls from inmates at Newport News City Jail are routinely recorded, it’s not clear whether they are allowed to make or receive calls from hospitals if there’s no such recording mechanism.

Lonnie Wilfork’s mother, Thomas-Johnson, said the family does not know whether Wilfork, 50, is physically capable of using the phone after his surgery.

“He’s not the type not to communicate with his wife or his mother, particularly since he has been ill in the last few weeks,” Thomas-Johnson said. “He would want us to know how he’s doing and what has happened to him. If anything, he’s probably wondering why we’re not calling and trying to see him.”

On Wednesday, the Daily Press called April Weston, the communications director for Riverside Health System, asking why the family hasn’t been given any information. Later that evening, Paul Constantine of MergeWorld, Riverside’s outside public relations firm, responded with an email that shed no light on what happened.

“Please direct all inquiries on this topic to the Newport News Sheriff’s Office,” Constantine wrote.

The Daily Press called Weston again Thursday, and she declined to cite a reason for the lack of details to the family.

Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan also declined to shed light on the case.

“Just to let you know that much of what you asked for in this (inquiry) cannot be released to you,” Morgan said in a voicemail last week.

Morgan said the sheriff’s office couldn’t reach Jean Wilfork, but “we explained it all to his mother” and that the mother then “explained it to the wife.” Morgan didn’t return follow-up phone calls from the Daily Press this week.

But Wilfork and Thomas-Johnson said that nothing about Lonnie’s surgery or condition has been explained to them.

Concerned about Lonnie’s health and desperate to learn more, the pair said they’ve called police, the probation office, the sheriff’s office and the hospital but gotten no better information. Jean Wilfork said she even called the Virginia Attorney General’s Office in Richmond.

“They didn’t call back either,” she said.

Lonnie Wilfork has various past charges on his record, but his recent issues stem from being declared a “habitual offender” more than 12 years ago by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles — based on negative points on his driving record.

Court records show he was convicted several times of driving after being declared a habitual offender — and pleaded guilty in 2019 to doing so in 2017.

But his probation officer recently accused Wilfork of violating the terms of his release on the 2017 charge. In late October, he was sent by court order to Harrisonburg to take part in a program designed for habitual offenders.

Wilfork began to feel sick during his time at the jail there, his wife said. His diverticulitis — an inflammation in the pouches of the colon — began to flare up earlier in the month, and he said he felt he had a “bubble” in his side.

Jean Wilfork said Harrisonburg correctional center staff loaded him up on Pepto Bismal rather than the soup, crackers and ginger ale that she said always worked in the past.

When she was informed by the Riverside doctor on Thanksgiving Day that her husband was going in for surgery, she asked whether it was related to diverticulitis, and the doctor said yes.

Wilfork told the doctor she’d be at the hospital as soon as she could, and he didn’t seem to have a problem with that. The doctor asked if Lonnie had health insurance, she said, and she relayed that he had a Blue Cross Blue Shield card.

After Jean Wilfork was kicked out of the hospital lobby that evening, Thomas-Johnson went to Riverside three days later to ask about her son.

But a security guard told her “there’s nothing I can say, nothing I can do,” and that she “needed to contact someone who knows what’s going on.” Then Thomas-Johnson asked what was really on her mind: “Is my son dead?”

“Ma’am, ma’am, if he was dead, I would have told you,” she said the security guard responded.

Court records in Newport News show Wilfork was served with court paperwork on the probation violation on Wednesday — 13 days after the emergency operation. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that paperwork was served on Wilfork at the magistrate’s downtown office or in his hospital room at Riverside.

Records show Wilfork was due for an arraignment Thursday, but a court official said that was postponed until Dec. 16 because he was still in the hospital.

Thomas-Johnson, a Newport News schoolteacher, says she passes Riverside twice a day on her way to and from work.

“I just say a prayer as I’m passing by and coming home,” she said. “I pray that he’s in good health and that he’s able to walk, talk and that we can hear from him.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com