This story is part of “Faces of the dead,” an ongoing series exploring the lives of Americans who have died from the novel coronavirus.
“I’m going to die in here,” Milagros DeLeon recalled him telling another sister more than a week before he went to the hospital, saying he was feverish and seeking outside treatment.
Carlos DeLeon was the first Connecticut inmate to die of the coronavirus.
To Milagros DeLeon, her brother was a handyman who loved to collect junk off the street, a joker who she said kidded around with the medical staff while he could still speak. He was also a smoker with chronic breathing difficulties, according to family — and that made him especially vulnerable to the virus turning correctional centers around the country into deadly hot spots.
Milagros said she called a reporter after her brother’s death, wanting people to know that the anonymous Connecticut inmate had a name and a family. Soon protesters were shouting about Carlos outside the Bridgeport Correctional Center in his city, demanding changes.
Milagros said she drove by and cried.
“You get so numb,” she said. “Like you just want to … just lift up a rock and go under and hide.”
The Connecticut Department of Correction said an inmate who died April 13, and whose identity it was not disclosing, was tested for the coronavirus on April 6 and taken to UConn Health on April 8, a day before his positive result came back.
Corrections officials said they are taking extensive precautions during the pandemic and “immediately” removing people with symptoms from the inmate population, as well as testing them. Gov. Ned Lamont (D) has said the state is releasing nonviolent inmates faster “than we have in a long time.”
Spokeswoman Karen Martucci said Thursday that the department’s measures to combat the coronavirus include a pause on visitors, temperature checks for staff before they enter facilities and separating inmates. Staff and prisoners are required to wear provided masks, she said, though she did not immediately clarify when this took effect.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, which is suing for increased social distancing and vulnerable inmates’ release, argued last month that families “will be left grieving entirely preventable deaths.”
Survived by three children and seven siblings, Carlos DeLeon has a big family to mourn him.
Faces of the dead
Milagros said she and Carlos grew up in Puerto Rico in a house built by their father, a fisherman. The family later squeezed into an uncle’s Brooklyn apartment so their mother could help take care of five more children. When Carlos was a teenager, they settled in Connecticut.
Milagros, who is three years older than Carlos, remembers always trying to keep him safe.
“Stay away from that woman,” she’d tell him.
Or: “Mind your business.”
When he’d see someone getting beat up and want to jump in, she’d say, “You can’t save the world sometimes.”
Carlos didn’t always heed her advice and sometimes got in trouble “just to make a couple of bucks,” she said. State records show he was previously convicted of several felonies: third-degree larceny and burglary in 2014, and then another burglary two years later. There are misdemeanors, too, including second-degree threatening and more larceny.
Milagros said she believes that, at 63, her brother was “no harm to nobody” — a guy who left behind a bunch of tinkered-with bikes and a big kite he painted meticulously with nail polish. He was always busy putting something together or cleaning the yard or touching up the house.
Unable to do his tinkering behind bars, she said, he was burning through money calling his family. But according to Milagros, Carlos’s siblings did not hear he was in the hospital until a couple days after his admission — when a doctor called late at night to say Carlos was fighting for his life in the intensive care unit.
He was already weak after another hospital stint where he needed supplemental oxygen, according to Milagros.
“He got a family,” she said. “I don’t know why they don’t call the family.”
The Connecticut Department of Correction did not respond Friday to a question about notifications for families of hospitalized inmates.
Now Milagros’s brother will share a grave with their mother. Their father lies close by. Milagros said her doctor told her to “take it easy” for the sake of her own health, but it’s a tough prescription: Carlos still needs to be buried, her throat is sore and her kids are worried she could be next.
