My Father Was the First Federal Prisoner to Die of COVID-19. He’d Been Trying to Get Out for Years.

“It’s kind of cold. It’s not a way to live your life, for your life to end that way.”

Mother Jones illustration; Courtesy of Jones' Family; BOP.gov

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Christopher Walker’s father, Patrick Jones, died on March 28the first federal prisoner to die from the coronavirus. He was incarcerated in Oakdale, Louisiana, in a facility where four others have since died from the disease. Jones, 49, was serving a 27-year sentence for a drug conviction; the victim of draconian and inequitable sentencing policies, he’d been trying for years to apply for release. In February, a federal judge refused his latest request.

Walker, 33, lives in Dallas and always thought he’d see his father again, that someday, sooner or later, his father would come home. On Saturday, Walker and other members of Jones’ family held a service in Temple, Texas, to say goodbye. Advocates for prisoners are calling for widespread release of people behind bars to protect them from the spreading coronavirus. This is Walker’s story, in his own words, lightly edited for length and clarity.

I heard that my father died from my grandmother. She called me. And then I saw this clip on the internet about the first inmate who died from the coronavirus and at first I thought it could not be him.

It was him.

My father called me all the time. Every month, for 10 minutes. He called me a week before, maybe more. It was the middle of March. But when he called me that time, I didn’t get to answer because I was at work, working at a warehouse. That was the last time he called me. But the last time we spoke was a month ago, not too long ago. He said he was putting in to come home, that Trump maybe was going to sign something. He was waiting on the answer as to whether he would be released. He was always talking about getting out.

It was a big part of my life, these calls. The majority of my life he was in jail. I didn’t know him the majority of my life.

The majority of my time growing up, I was good, I wasn’t trying to see him. I knew one person who knew him, who used to tell me about my daddy when I was real young, like 10 years old. He stayed next door to my house. He was locked up with my father. He was real cool. He used to tell me that my dad used talk about me. That’s when I was young and I used to be like, “I don’t care.”

I finally met my father when I was 20. I’ll be 34 in May.

I just found him and reached out. I had a little girl. She’s 14 now. When I had a daughter of my own, I thought about what it means to be a father. And I wanted to meet him and I wanted her to meet him. It was cool—we drove down to Temple, Texas, where he was staying. It was an apartment complex. We sat and talked. It was a short visit. But it was it was cool.

Then, right after that, right after we met, a couple months after that, he caught that charge and he went to prison. It was like we were just starting, and then it stopped. But after that, we did stay in touch. I ended up going to prison too, and he started writing me from the prison he was in. We were writing from prison to prison. We would write letters. He was mostly trying to keep me level-headed. The letters, they helped. Talking to someone experiencing the same thing, it helped. He would give me good positive advice, on how a man should carry himself. I turned 21 on the street, and by the time I had another birthday out on the streets I was 25. We were in touch that whole time.

When I was locked up, I was now put in his shoes and, you know, I could see where he was coming from. I had two kids, one on the way, when I went to jail. I didn’t meet the second until she was 2 years old. She’s now 11. I used to have a lot of anger toward my father, and then I was inside and used his situation to think about myself. I thought, everybody makes mistakes.

I got out. He was still in. But when I talked to him on the phone, you’d think he’d been in jail for two or three days. He kept that same little vibe. He was in jail for long time. At least with me on the phone, he was like he was immune to it. Maybe just on the phone, but he was always jiving and happy when we talked. They lock up your body, but they can’t trap your mind. You have to keep your mind going and keep it outside your body. You can’t think like you’re in a cage. You can’t think like that.

Inside, he was working in the bakery. He used to talk about baking cakes. He would say he wanted to get out and try to start a little cake company, to make birthday cakes for people when he got out. He was anxious, you could hear the anxiousness in him, about starting a business.

He kept saying that he was going to get out. He knew that he was going to get through. He was always in the law library. He was doing that for years.

He didn’t make it. It’s kind of cold. It’s not a way to live your life, for your life to end that way. Especially when you’re trying to start your life over.

This article was reported in partnership with Type Investigations.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate