In late April, Tiffany Mofield died begging to be let out of a locked shower while saying that she “could not breathe.” 

According to The Intercept, Mofield had spent two weeks quarantined in an infirmary at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women after exhibiting symptoms consistent with COVID-19. But even though she was still showing signs of the virus, Mofield was transferred to general population. 

“She was clearly not better, as she was visibly short of breath and extremely lethargic,” said Michelle Angelina, a woman housed in the same unit where Mofield died.

“She died right in front of my neighbor’s door and just diagonally from my door, about five feet away,” Angelina said further. “Many inmates are frightened for our lives and safety as a result of us witnessing Ms. Mofield die.”

Mofield passed out in the shower, a space likened to a “converted mop closet.”

According to the woman who refused anonymity, they are transported to the shower handcuffed to a belly belt and locked inside where there is no emergency call box. Mofield blacked out again on the night she died. After she pleaded to be let out for several minutes, a staff member finally came and carried the barely conscious Mofield to a wheelchair where she became completely unresponsive.

Officers used an automated defibrillator and performed CPR on Mofield until an ambulance arrived, but she died before the paramedics could get her on the gurney. 

Mofield was almost at the end of serving a five-year sentence for an attempted bank robbery. She was a mother of three and grandmother of four. Her daughter, Shatifia Cooke, took to Facebook to honor her mother. 

“I waited almost 4 years for that woman to get back out here with me. I couldn’t wait to wake up to her cooking breakfast just waiting to get our day started. She was so easy to get along with and talk [to. She] opened her doors to everyone if she had it and you needed something, it was yours,” wrote Cooke. 

Mofield is one of 304 incarcerated persons who have died from the novel coronavirus, according to The Marshall Project. Thirty-eight incarcerated individuals have died in New Jersey, alone. 

The coronavirus was bound to pose an imminent threat to those imprisoned. In a confined environment where the denial of freedom is the intent, a viral pandemic could naturally wreak havoc. In early May, the Bureau of Prisons revealed that more than 70% of federal prisoners who were tested for COVID-19 received a positive diagnosis, as Blavity previously reported. 

As jails and prisons attempt to curb COVID-19 outbreaks, at least 16,000 individuals have been released from incarceration due to the coronavirus pandemic, reports Fox News. The majority of those released were being held on nonviolent charges and deemed no threat to society.