Recent Tarrant County jail deaths unite groups from both sides of political aisle
A recent death in the county jail has brought together an unlikely alliance in Tarrant County.
A group of conservative Second Amendment activists joined calls for the resignation of Sheriff Bill Waybourn at the commissioners court meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 14. Their calls joined those of others who have dedicated months — some years— to demand accountability for the growing death rate in the county jail.
Excited and vocal, the newcomers made it clear this was their first time to commissioners court. Sheriff’s deputies detained three and arrested two of them as tensions boiled over into shouting and scuffles.
Sporting American flags on their T-shirts and AR-15 rifles on their ballcaps, the cohort that came out to demand justice for the death of Mason Yancy in the county jail in December may have seemed like strange bedfellows for the activists from Broadway Baptist Church and relatives of Anthony Johnson Jr., the Black Marine veteran who was allegedly killed by guards in the jail in April.
But they seemed to find common ground in the pain of loss.
The difference between the two groups was stated plainly by Fort Worth resident Bishop Kirkland, a Marine veteran who is no stranger to these proceedings.
“While the problems are not necessarily Black and white, I just find it ironic that when Chasity Bonner died, when Anthony Johnson Jr. died, the sheriff wouldn’t come,” he said. “No offense to these families, when two white boys die, he’s here. That’s a problem.”
“None taken,” Yancy’s brother Darren could be heard saying to Kirkland as he spoke.
Waybourn declined requests to brief commissioners on jail deaths in May, and again in August. He briefed them on a federal report of the jail in November, calling it a “Cadillac model of a jail.”
Precinct 2 Commissioner Alisa Simmons criticized the sheriff’s touting of the report, saying it was not the official Justice Department civil rights investigation she and others have called for.
“My problem is that some of the same people who voted for Bill Waybourn because he is a Republican are some of the same people in this room now who are hurting,” Kirkland said.
The other death Kirkland referred to was that of Vernon Ramsey, who, like Yancy, was white. Ramsey, who also died in Sheriff’s Office custody in December, was indicted on child sex assault charges a week after his death.
Kirkland went on to make the same demands he has made for months, like accountability for the sheriff and a federal civil rights investigation into jail conditions, and then said he hoped this issue would transcend party lines in order to lead to change.
Having spoken to commissioners before Kirkland, Darren Yancy, of Burleson, said he “absolutely rejected” an explanation of his brother’s death that Waybourn gave commissioners during a briefing earlier in the session.
Darren Yancy emphasized that his brother had diabetes and died after not receiving the medicine he needed to live. Waybourn said in his briefing that Yancy came to the county jail with “medical issues,” but did not mention diabetes.
The sheriff said Yancy “was given life saving techniques and he died,” Darren Yancy said. “Those are contradictory statements.”
Darren Yancy told the commissioners that for him, the buck stops at the top.
“The challenge we have is you’ve got a number of deaths under various employees since 2017 that keep occurring, and there’s one man at the top, and that’s Bill Waybourn,” he said.
Joe Palmer, of Fort Worth, was a close friend of Mason Yancy, whom he described as having a “contagious smile.” They bonded over their love of cars and worked on Yancy’s Ford Mustang together.
He also acknowledged his newfound role in the history of the Tarrant County jail that brought him to commissioners court that day.
“It might have been vanity to believe that attending and speaking in the meetings following Anthony Johnson Jr.’s death would spare any future lies, and it feels at the same time wrong and worthless in thinking, if I had known that a friend would be next,” he said.
“I didn’t consult the mothers of any of the other dead,” he continued. “I didn’t stand by Anthony Johnson’s sister. I didn’t call any of you demanding answers. I haven’t even called following your decision to pay no fewer than nine law firms to team up against Anthony’s family. I did figure out at the time that a human being was dying in your jail on average every 42 days since 2017.”
The fact that these two seemingly disparate groups have found common ground on this issue came as no surprise to Krishnaveni Gundu, co-founder and executive director of Texas Jail Project. The United States incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than any other country in the world.
“Mass incarceration has impacted everybody,” she said. “So we all know somebody who’s connected, who’s impacted by the incarceration. … It touches everybody. It’s not just them and us. You hear people saying, well, it disproportionately impacts Black and Brown people, and I always add to that and poor white folks, because that’s the majority of our cases from rural counties.”
Sheriff briefs commissioners on recent jail deaths
Waybourn addressed the county commissioners at Tuesday’s meeting, offering his “30,000-foot view” of the deaths of Yancy and Ramsey.
Waybourn said that Yancy came to the jail with “medical issues” and was seen by medical staff nine times in the four days that he was incarcerated before his death.
“He was in a cell seeing two nurses when he collapsed,” Waybourn said. “Life saving stuff was taking place immediately, within very few seconds. … I think the takeaway is that all protocols were followed by Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office personnel.”
When asked by County Judge Tim O’Hare about reports that Yancy did not receive the medication he needed to survive, Waybourn said there is “no evidence” to support them.
Simmons told Waybourn that she had heard that Yancy did not receive immediate medical attention, but that he was “in distress for hours and hours.”
Waybourn denied the stories she had heard.
“These rumors are just incredible,” he said.
Later in the session, after Waybourn had left, Yancy’s friend Stephen Vasquez addressed the commissioners in the public comments section.
Vasquez said he had received two text messages from Yancy begging him to post his bail in the days before his death.
“December 26 9:57pm: ‘Bro, this is a matter of life and death. I would never ask you anything like this if it wasn’t serious,’” he read from his phone. “December 28, a few hours before he died: ‘Bro, I can hardly move, please get me out.’”
The Star-Telegram verified that the text messages came from Yancy via the jail messaging system operated by Smart Communications. The time stamp on the second text shows it was sent on Dec. 27, the day Yancy died. Vasquez said speaking to the court was an emotional experience and that he said the wrong date.
Vasquez said he was also contacted by Yancy’s cell mate, who told him that Yancy was not getting his medicine and had seizures while in custody.
Yancy was arrested in Grapevine on charges of drug possession after he was seen stumbling around outside a smoke shop, Waybourn said. The drug was ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic that has found more use to treat depression in recent years, but is also used recreationally.
Amid questions from Simmons, Waybourn defended the reputation of the jail, saying it recently passed an inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards “with flying colors.”
Commissioners also spoke with Zelia Baugh, executive vice president of behavioral health at John Peter Smith Hospital, which provides medical services in the jail. She said that incarcerated people have instant access to medical services, either by contacting JPS staff directly via tablets or by notifying a guard.
Simmons asked how the public is supposed to know that Ramsey, Yancy and others who died in custody received the medical care authorities say they were given, since such information is generally withheld from the public on grounds of an ongoing investigation.
Despite getting answers contradictory to what she had heard from constituents, Simmons expressed hope for progress in the new year.
“There’s enough blame to be shared amongst us,” she said. “I am going to attempt to be optimistic that with these new court members and a new jail chief, and with all of y’all continued efforts to come down here, to put pressure on us to stop these deaths.”
Precinct 1 Commissioner Roderick Miles and Precinct 3 Commissioner Matt Krause were sworn in to their new posts on Jan. 1. The Sheriff’s Office announced on Jan. 13 that it had hired a new jail administrator.
This story was originally published January 15, 2025 at 12:12 PM.
