Nearly two months after she buried her youngest child at Quantico National Cemetery in Virginia, Rice is still waiting for answers.

Stanley R. Rice was an inmate at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, a private prison in Youngstown, Ohio, that houses D.C. prisoners.

He is one of three D.C. inmates housed at the prison whose deaths during the past six months have been officially classified as natural. But at least Rice’s death has raised many questions from his family, and all three deaths are being investigated as part of a federal class-action lawsuit pending against Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the prison.

"Inmates don’t get medical attention until they are really, really sick," said Dr. Jesse C. Giles, a forensic pathologist at the Mahoning County coroner’s office in Youngstown. "We ruled this a death of natural causes, but whether he (Rice) would have died if he had gotten medical attention earlier I can’t say."

CCA officials and D.C. Department of Corrections officials did not return repeated telephone calls for comment.

Rice died June 4 at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Youngstown of multi-organ failure, systemic blood infection and ketoacidosis, according to county records. He was 42 years old. Family members who spoke to him six days before his death said he was in good health.

Rice was admitted to the hospital around 8:30 a.m. June 2, but family members in the District said they were not notified until more than 24 hours later. Stanley Rice’s mother, sisters and nephew drove through the night to Youngstown after a doctor told them by telephone that Stanley Rice might not survive. By the time they got to Ohio, he was dead.

"Had we been notified the day he was brought in, we could have seen him alive," said Annette Speakes, Rice’s sister.

Giles said Rice exhibited the classic symptoms of new onset diabetes. Rice’s mother and sister said he had never been diagnosed with or treated for diabetes. They said they find it hard to believe he developed the disease and died from it in a day and half.

"My family deserves some type of answer," Speakes said. "It’s just awfully suspicious. How can an individual just die like that overnight?"

Speakes said she examined her brother’s body at the hospital and found extensive bleeding from the back of his head. She said the mattress was soaked with blood.

Officials at the Mahoning County coroner’s office said they had no reason to suspect foul play in Rice’s death. The family requested an autopsy at the hospital. Officials at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital told them last week the report was not yet completed.

Family members said they were told by CCA officials that Rice was helped into an ambulance by two people at the prison. Hospital officials told them Rice was unconscious by the time he was admitted.

What happened in the hours before Rice got into the ambulance and after he arrived at the hospital is still a mystery to the family. Speakes said CCA officials refuse to turn over medical records to family members and officials at the D.C. Department of Corrections do not return phone calls.

"No one is interested in helping us," she said. "Corrections never contacted us and still will not return calls.

We don’t know where to turn to try to get answers."

"I’ll never get over this," Rice’s mother said. "They did something to him up there. I didn’t hardly recognize him. His face was all swollen. The blood vessels in his eyes were all burst. That is a terrible thing for a mother to see."

Rice was transferred about a year ago from Lorton Correctional Complex in Fairfax County, Va., to the private Ohio facility run by Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville, Tenn., company that operates private prisons in several states. He was one of about 1,500 inmates transferred as part of the gradual shutdown by 2001 of all facilities at the Lorton complex, as mandated by Congress. Rice was serving a sentence of 15 years to life for assault with intent to rape while armed and 10 to 30 years for first-degree burglary.

Among his possessions turned over to his family was a handwritten letter addressed to Mayor Marion Barry describing conditions in the prison and Rice’s difficulties in seeking medical care, his family said. The letter was dated two days before Rice’s death and was never mailed.

Little information was available about the circumstances surrounding the death last Dec. 31 of D.C. inmate Michael T. Cephus at the prison. Cephus was admitted to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital with a sore throat, was evaluated and sent back to the prison where he later died of septic shock, "a weird chest infection," pathologist Giles said. The death was ruled natural by the coroner’s office.

Cephus, 42, was serving time for two counts of credit card fraud, attempted burglary, second degree theft and several prison breaks. His last known address was in D.C.’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Another inmate, Perry Clay, died March 21 at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Ohio records attributed Clay’s death to respiratory distress and pneumonia, while a report published March 24 in Youngstown said the 35-year-old inmate died of complications from AIDS.

The three deaths are being investigated as part of a class-action lawsuit filed last year in federal court against the District of Columbia and Corrections Corporation of America, alleging the company failed to provide adequate medical care for inmates, failed to protect inmates from each other and failed to provide proper training for corrections officers. Thirteen stabbings and two murders have been reported at the prison since it opened last year.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator