Rodricus Lewis
- Age: 47
- Name of Jail: Union County Jail
- Location: El Dorado, AR
- Cause of Death*: Ischemic heart disease complicated by COVID-19 infection, with contributing factors of schizophrenia, kidney disease, diabetes, and pulmonary emphysema
- Incarceration Type: Pre-trial detention
- Private Company: Turn Key Health Clinics (now TK Health)
- Incarceration Duration: About ten months
- Date of Death: November 26, 2023
Rodricus Lewis spent some twenty years in the U.S. Navy. Later in life, according to his son, Brian, Lewis struggled with serious mental health issues. In January of 2023, he was arrested and booked into the Union County Jail in El Dorado, AR. For most of his adulthood, Lewis had been more than 200 pounds, according to his son. But during his ten months in the county jail— mostly spent in solitary confinement, according to Lewis’s family’s attorney—Lewis mentally decompensated and often ceased to eat, becoming emaciated. That November, after receiving what his family described as deeply inadequate healthcare, Lewis died at the jail, weighing 128 pounds. An autopsy noted that Lewis’s body was “cachetic,” evidence of what is often known as “wasting syndrome.”
When Brian was a kid, his dad had always been fun-loving. “He was super easy-going,” Brian said of his father. “He never took anything too seriously, and was cool as a cucumber.” The pair would go mini-golfing and go-karting. They loved to play basketball together.
Years later, Brian tried his best to communicate regularly with his father when he got locked up at the Union County Jail, as did other family members. For months, Brian regularly spoke with his dad in jail. But in the summer of 2023, his dad largely ceased to communicate with Brian, and he knew that “something was weird.”
Upon obtaining his father’s jail records after his death, which included photographs, Brian was shocked: “When I saw how emaciated he was when he died, I was like, ‘This is not okay!’” The family hopes to obtain more information on what happened to Lewis: why he was detained for so long—allegedly in solitary confinement—and why he had lost so much weight. They also hope to learn how such deaths might be prevented in the future.
Asked for comment about Lewis’s death, TK Health stated, “We are limited by patient privacy laws as to what we can say. However, we can tell you that starvation and dehydration did not cause or play a role in his death.” The Union County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to the Lab’s request for comment.
The Union County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to the Lab’s request for comment.