Fort Worth prison responsible for new mother’s COVID death, family says in $20M claim
The Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service broke their own protocols when they “needlessly and recklessly” moved a pregnant woman across the country to a prison in Fort Worth, where she died from COVID-19, according to a wrongful death claim filed against the United States.
From the moment Andrea Circle Bear was placed on a plane to Texas, the U.S. government endangered her life repeatedly, according to the administrative claim her family filed on March 11. The government agencies have six months to respond to the claim, which calls for $20 million in damages paid to Circle Bear’s family. If the claim is denied, the family can file a lawsuit.
The mother of five was in her third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy in South Dakota when, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, she was put on a small plane with seven other people and flown to Fort Worth. Records make no mention of masking, social distancing or COVID-19 testing of any of the people on the plane on March 20, 2020.
Within six days, the 30-year-old tested positive for COVID-19. By March 31, she was hospitalized at John Peter Smith Hospital, where, while intubated, she gave birth to her daughter via cesarean section. Her daughter, Elcyiah Elizabeth Ann High Bear, survived. Circle Bear did not. On April 28, she died of cardiac arrest.
“I didn’t know the details of how much suffering she did,” Circle Bear’s grandmother, Clara LeBeau, said. “And especially there in Texas.”
Circle Bear was a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and was serving a 26-month sentence on a nonviolent drug offense. She was the first woman to die from COVID-19 complications while in federal custody.
The Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service did not immediately respond to requests to comment.
Unsafe conditions at Carswell prison
The last time LeBeau spoke to her granddaughter, Circle Bear was at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth and thought she might have pneumonia. She had been sick since March 26, six days after she arrived at the Federal Medical Center Carswell women’s prison in Fort Worth, where she was placed into quarantine.
At Carswell, quarantine meant Circle Bear was placed into a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell with three other women, who all shared a toilet and sink, according to the complaint. She stayed in the cell for eight days.
According to a lawsuit filed by women at FMC Carswell in September 2020, Carswell lacked toilet paper, sanitary pads and soap for the bathrooms. The prison did not implement modified COVID-19 procedures, such as requiring staff to wear masks, until April 2020. Women at the prison were given one mask per week, according to the lawsuit.
Katherine Rosenfeld, an attorney with Emery Celli LLP representing Circle Bear’s grandmother in the claim, said it was “shocking that a prison that bills itself as a medical facility” would bunk “four people transferred from across the country into two different locations in the same cell.”
“To me what it says is that Carswell had a shockingly poor emergency/medical response to the pandemic that was so dangerous,” she said. “And obviously led to Andrea’s death.”
According to a whistleblower complaint filed by Carswell’s union, staff were given minimal guidelines about how to deal with COVID-19. At the time of Circle Bear’s transfer, the prison had not gone on lockdown even though the BOP told the public otherwise, and inmates continued to play volleyball in the compound or watch TV together in a small room, the Carswell bargaining unit AFGE Local 1009 said in a letter to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn on April 7, 2020.
‘Uniquely careless’ medical care
The medical care Circle Bear received at Carswell, which is the only federal medical facility for incarcerated women in the country, was negligent and inadequate, according to the claim.
While many prisons have insufficient medical care, Rosenfeld said, Carswell’s conditions “seemed to be uniquely careless and scary.”
Circle Bear, who was at that point 7-and-a-half months pregnant, was not seen by a doctor until her fourth day at the prison, according to the complaint. On March 26, she developed a dry cough, shortness of breath and muscle aches. Despite her high-risk pregnancy, she did not see a doctor until two days later. Even then, she only saw the prison’s doctor because she had started experiencing contractions, not because of her COVID-19 symptoms, the claim says.
A doctor at the prison noted she was feverish, but did not do any other assessment, according to the claim. When Circle Bear still had a fever three hours later, she was sent to JPS Hospital for a “full workup.” She was sent back to Carswell that same night. A JPS physician instructed staff that she needed close supervision for new symptoms and staff should “send her out to the hospital if temp continues to rise or if she develops cough, body aches, or shortness of breath,” according to the claim.
For the next three days, Circle Bear’s condition and her cough worsened as her fever rose, according to the claim. While prison staff noted her condition, they did not send her to the hospital, the claim says.
In visits with Dr. Janet Shackelford at Carswell on March 28 and March 31, Shackelford recorded Circle Bear was “coughing, severe w production green/brown mucus” and had a 100.5 degree fever. Her fever had spiked to 102 on the evening of March 30. After Circle Bear’s death, according to the claim, Shackelford issued retroactive “corrections” to these notes and said she clicked the wrong entry and Circle Bear did not have a severe cough.
By March 31, Circle Bear had been sick for five days. At no point during those days did Carswell staff monitor her baby’s health, the claims says. Her medical notes do not mention any fetal health monitoring, such as the baby’s heart rate, during that time period.
Seven other women have died from COVID-19 while in custody at the prison, according to BOP data.
‘If only I could go see her’
When LeBeau spoke to her granddaughter on the phone on March 26, Circle Bear said she told Carswell staff she was sick, but they would not listen, LeBeau said. LeBeau tried to comfort her and they talked and prayed together.
That was the last time she spoke to her granddaughter.
When Circle Bear was admitted to JPS on March 31, her breathing worsened and was she put on a ventilator. The next day, her daughter was born by emergency C-section.
When a doctor called her with the news, LeBeau drove from South Dakota to Texas immediately, driving through the day and into the night. She and Circle Bear had already planned for LeBeau to take the baby when she was born. When LeBeau got to the hospital, she was allowed to see her great-granddaughter. But doctors would not let her see Circle Bear because of BOP protocols.
“I figured if only I could go see her...” LeBeau said. “I was there long enough to be with the baby and learn how to feed her and they wanted me to watch all these movies and taking care of the baby and I thought, ‘If only I could go see her.’”
LeBeau was forced to leave Texas without seeing her granddaughter. She and the baby returned to South Dakota. Circle Bear remained on a ventilator for three-and-a-half weeks and died on April 28.
Violation of policy
According to the BOP’s own policies, Circle Bear also should not have been transferred in the first place, Rosenfeld said. The BOP announced on March 13 it was restricting movement of people in the prison system and only “local medical trips” should continue as needed. The Inspector General Office had also ordered the BOP to stop accepting new intakes from the U.S. Marshals service on March 13. And yet, Circle Bear’s transfer continued.
The U.S. Marshals Service also knew Circle Bear had a high-risk pregnancy, according to the wrongful death claim. In emails exchanged between March 4 and 6, U.S. Marshals Service personnel discussed delaying the transfer of Circle Bear and another pregnant inmate. One employee noted, “You could wait until they have the babies.”
Another employee replied and said, “We do NOT want to wait until they have their babies.”
Rosenfeld said neither the BOP nor the U.S. Marshals Services has given any explanation of why Circle Bear’s transfer continued despite the dangerous conditions.
Circle Bear also arrived at Carswell without her medical records — the U.S. Marshals Service had forgotten them, according to the claim.
“It certainly seems like if you’re going to undertake this incredibly dangerous procedure of transporting a very pregnant person at this exploding point of a pandemic, the least you can do is bring their medical records,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s evidence of the carelessness in every aspect of what happened here.”
Circle Bear’s daughter
Circle Bear’s sentence for 26 months would have ended by now and she likely would have returned to South Dakota, where her grandmother had been setting aside money for her to help with rent. LeBeau had planned to help her find a job and set up a home.
“She was looking forward to that,” LeBeau said.
LeBeau is raising Elcyiah, who is now 2 years old, and Circle Bear’s oldest daughter. She worries no matter how much she cares for them that she will not be able to replace the love of a mother.
Elcyiah has been walking, has started to talk and is “getting into a lot of things,” LeBeau said.
When Circle Bear was younger, she loved her weekend trips to visit her grandmother, LeBeau said. Circle Bear and her siblings, who lived in Pierre, South Dakota, would ride dirt bikes and play on the trampoline at their grandmother’s house. When she got older, Circle Bear loved basketball and to bake; she was good enough that she sold her baked goods. Circle Bear enrolled in college courses, but being a full-time mom, student and employee was too much. She dropped out and focused instead on taking care of her four sons and one daughter.
In 2015, Circle Bear’s sister also died while she was in custody and pregnant. Sarah Lee Circle Bear was 24 when she died from a methamphetamine overdose in a South Dakota jail, Indian Country Today reported. Hours before she died, fellow inmates wrote and signed a letter to jailers saying they were concerned for Sarah Lee Circle Bear’s well-being, according to the Aberdeen News.
This story was originally published March 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
