By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kimberly Burks knows her son isn’t coming back after two former West Virginia corrections officers pleaded guilty and six more have been charged by federal prosecutors following his death at a state-run jail in Raleigh County.
That’s why she says she wants Gov. Jim Justice and other political leaders to show up.
“Jim Justice, where the hell are you?” Burks, of Beckley, said at a news conference that inmate advocates held Saturday at the Capitol in Charleston.
Burks and other loved ones of inmates who died at state-run jails in recent years called out Justice, the Legislature and Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., for what they say is a failure to address what has been a sharply rising death count at the facilities.
The family members were joined by leaders of the West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign and Repairers of the Breach, a North Carolina-based social justice activist group.
“We’ve got to be their voice,” said Justine Shrewsbury, the partner of Alvis Shrewsbury, 45, when he died in September 2022 at the same jail where Burks’ son, Quantez Burks, died in March of that year: Southern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility. “If we’re not their voice, who’s going to be their voice? Nobody.”