PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY, Va. -- A bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers, former inmates, and inmates' family members are putting pressure on the governing board that oversees Riverside Regional Jail to find a new leader who can clean up issues that have led to drug overdoses and drug-related deaths in the jail.
"It’s just as easy to find drugs in there as it is if you was on the streets," Austin Wells, who has served time in Riverside, said. "Heroin, cocaine, marijuana. You can buy pills, anything you can get your hands on in the streets, you can get your hands on in Riverside... honestly, it’s nothing but gang violence in there and drug rings."
Denise Gunn lost her son in Riverside Regional Jail.
He went to Riverside for a probation violation and died while incarcerated.
A toxicology report showed he died from a cocaine and fentanyl overdose, his mother said.
"My son was an addict for 13 years. We fought the battle together as a family," Gunn said. "How did he get them? Who gave them to him? How can they get them in jail?"
Gunn's son is one of about a dozen inmates who've died while at Riverside since 2020.
"There is no reason that an institution should be a death sentence when it is intended to be a rehabilitation environment," Sen. Lashrecse Aird (D - 13th District) said at Monday's press conference where state lawmakers put pressure on the jail's governing board to find a new leader who can improve the situation.
"They have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to search for and hire the most effective, quality leader that they can," Del. Carrie Coyner (R - 75th District) said. "In the past, we had a superintendent who had experience in a prison. It is not an acceptable background."
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Watch: Officer arrested for trying to smuggle drugs into Riverside Regional Jail (March 2022)
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