During the early morning count on Saturday, Aug. 26, state corrections officers found Vincent Willis dead in his cell at the Dick Conner Correctional Center in Hominy.
The 59-year-old prisoner died overnight in his sleep, according to an offender death report obtained through the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
Another older prisoner in the same housing unit died two days earlier. Jimmy Lanford, a 63-year-old man serving a life sentence for a first-degree murder in Osage County, was taken to a Tulsa hospital on Aug. 17. He died a week later.
The two men died as an unrelenting heat wave gripped the southern U.S. From August 20-26, the Tulsa International Airport Station reported an average high of 100, with temperatures early in the week as high as 104. The Tulsa airport is about 50 miles southeast of Dick Conner.
Corrections department spokesperson Kay Thompson said the men were in poor health and prison medical staff do not suspect heat played a role in the deaths. She said Dick Conner and other facilities that lack air conditioning use portable chillers and fans to keep temperatures down during heat waves. Prisoners receive unlimited access to water and ice and staff regularly gauge indoor temperatures during count times.
As Oklahoma Watch’s Keaton Ross reports in this week’s Long Story Short, prisoner advocates argue the deaths highlight a need for universal air conditioning within Oklahoma’s correctional system.
