90-year-old Kansas prisoner dies after testing positive for COVID-19
A 90-year-old Kansas prisoner at Lansing Correctional Facility has died after contracting COVID-19, the state’s corrections department said Friday.
The prisoner, whose identity was withheld by authorities, died Thursday. He has been incarcerated in the Leavenworth County facility since 2015 and was convicted of aggravated indecent liberties involving a child, Kansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman Carol Pitts said in a statement.
The death in the Leavenworth County facility marks the 23rd within the Kansas prison system related to COVID-19 since the pandemic began, according to KDOC. The corrections department includes in its tally prisoners and staff members. The most recent COVID-19 deaths seen by KDOC occurred in March 2021 at the Winfield Correctional Facility, where an inmate and a correctional officer died within the span of 11 days.
Lansing is named among several correctional facilities in Kansas with clusters of confirmed COVID-19 exposure, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. As of Friday, there had been 174 confirmed cases there within the past two weeks, state health department data show.
