EL DORADO, Kan. (AP) —Another Kansas prison worker has died from complications of the coronavirus.
The El Dorado Correctional Facility described Gabe Morales as a “wonderful asset” in announcing his death on Wednesday.
Morales began his career with the Kansas Department of Corrections at the Winfield Correctional Facility in May 2014 and moved to the El Dorado prison in July 2015. Part of Morales’s job was to prepare inmates for life after their sentences ended.
He told KAKE-TV for a story last year that, “It’s not about the person they are when they came in, you really want to affect them, so they’re a better person when they go out.”
The state’s prisons have been battling numerous COVID-19 outbreaks, with the prison in El Dorado recording 180 COVID-19 cases among staff and 889 among inmates as of Monday. Statewide, there have been more than a dozen deaths among staff and inmates.
Kansas added 5,089 confirmed and probable coronavirus cases from Monday to Wednesday, pushing its pandemic total to 209,689. It added another 59 deaths, raising its COVID-19 death toll to 2,507.