NURSE WHO LOST CHILD WORKING INSIDE PRISON NOW FOCUS OF 22 DAY WILDCAT STRIKE BY GUARDS
DESPITE PROPOSED 'DEAL,' 1000s OF STATE PRISON GUARDS REMAIN ON STRIKE
A nurse from the Upstate Correctional Facility being rushed into the emergency room at a local hospital after suspected exposure to synthetic drugs. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
EXCLUSIVE Mar. 10, 2025 Last updated: 3:20 PM
Thousands of striking state Correction Officers returned to work as their wildcat strike entered its 22d day. Thousands more did not.
The ones who stayed on the strike line rallied behind a prison nurse who lost an unborn child due to suspected exposure to synthetic drugs.
Though they did not name her, she is a registered nurse and 34-year-old mother-of-three.
“My wife's just struggling with it,” Scott Mitchell, her husband, told The Free Lance on Monday. “It's hard for her.”
“She's doesn't know how to deal with the entire situation,” he added.
While the guards' union reached a proposed deal to end the strike, because the guards themselves were striking without union authorization it was up to them to decide whether to return.
That decision was made during a group Zoom call with leaders from each striking prison on Sunday. During the call, a faction of strikers from the maximum-security Upstate Correctional Facility made a raw, emotional appeal to keep the strike going.
"Regardless of who goes back in," striking Upstate Correctional Facility guard Mike Ashley said during the call, "we're going to battle to the very end."
"No matter what happens," Ashley added, "Upstate will still be here at this barrel"—steel barrels filled with burning firewood are an icon of the winter strike.
The Zoom call was leaked, and published by The Free Lance Sunday afternoon.
In the video, Ashley says Upstate's strikers are motivated to continue because a pregnant civilian nurse lost an unborn child working inside the prison on Jan. 25, 2025.
"We lost a life. We lost an unborn child in this," Ashley said. "Nothing worse that can happen in this."
Not only did the nurse lose a child, but Ashley said the prison’s superintendent, Donald Uhler, at first denied the nurse time-off to recover.
“Our superintendent had the balls to look directly in these peoples’ face and say, ‘I can cover you for a few days, but it’s not really workers comp.’”
More than 25 workers at Upstate were stricken by suspected exposure to synthetic drugs on Jan. 22. The workers included 12 guards, 7 nurses and an office assistant, the agency that manages New York's prisons, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said.
DOCCS didn't say what exactly caused the workers to be stricken, but it did say they were transported to a local hospital "for further evaluation and treatment.”
Three days after the mysterious Jan. 22 incident, five more Upstate workers, three guards and two nurses, were stricken with similar symptoms. Two of the guards and a nurse “also fell ill and were taken to the hospital where they were treated and released,” DOCCS' spokesman, Thomas Mailey, said.
Road side historical sign commemorating the opening of the Bare Hill Correctional Facility on Nov. 22, 1988. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Narcan saved the lives of one of the guards and a nurse, according to Mailey.
Both appeared unresponsive to this reporter who witnessed them being rushed into the emergency room at a local hospital.
Savannah Mitchell was one of the nurses stricken on Jan. 22.
Treating a sickened prisoner, she collapsed.
“Her eyes were rolling in the back of her head,” Scott, her hsuband, said a witness told him. “Her tongue was hanging out.”
“She needed four doses of Narcan to bring her back,” Scott added. “They rushed her to the hospital.”
At the hospital that first night doctors didn’t even give her an IV, he said. When they sent her home, her discharge papers listed “possible exposure to a chemical or due to the acute stress of the environment she was in."
Mailey, DOCCS' spokesman, said that "Due to HIPPA protection, DOCCS does not comment on an individual’s health or medical care."
A spokesman for the union that represents DOCCS nurses, the New York State Public Employees Federation, did not respond to a request to comment.
Scott said Savannah collapsed in the shower the next day and had to be rushed by ambulance back to the hospital.
She was vomitting, severely fatigued and felt back and kidney pain. Scott said “I forced them to do blood work” but it came out mostly negative.
One thing came out positive.
“We found out we were pregnant,” Scott revealed, “We did not know at all.”
“All those emotions go through your mind,” he added. “Is the baby going to be ok? What are the long term effects?”
Savannah miscarried three days later, on a Sunday morning.
“We came home she was still in pain,” Scott said. “Just felt like absolute trash pretty much.”
She couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment for a week. She actually went back to work for three days. When she finally saw a doctor, he gave her a note that excused her from duty. She’s been recovering at home since, Scott said.
“It’s horrifying to me,” he added, “that these people in Albany can’t see this.”
“This has not just happened to use, its happened to people throughout the state,” he revealed. “People have been cut, people have been stabbed, people have lost their life. And they just do not care.”
Abandoned gas station occupied by striking guards from the Upstate Correctional Facility. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Among the demands striking guards have made is “No more paper mail for anyone, including legal mail.”
They believe most of the synthetic drugs entering New York’s prisons come in through legal mail. DOCCS has already banned ordinary snail mail, which is now scanned with copies forwarded to prisoners. Strikers want legal mail processed the same way.
Scott Mitchell said he and his wife have been researching what, exactly, happened to her with the help of independent investigators. They believe, he said, she was possibly exposed to a new formulation of a drug called NPS.
“Basically what that is a new psychoactive substance,” he explained. “A new drug that is not a detectable by a normal toxicology examination.”
But formerly incarcerated advocates question whether drugs are actually causing the sickness prison workers describe.
Michelle Bonet was sent to solitary confinement for a false drug test while serving a 4-to-12 year sentence from 2017 to 2023.
“We must ask,” she writes in an essay published today, “‘Were these truly exposure incidents, or was something else at play?’”
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