Why are people still being arrested for petty minor crimes anyway during this pandemic? The 30-year-old pregnant mother should have never been arrested and sent to Silverdale in the first place. Is the prison system so desperate to fill jails and prison beds that even during this pandemic they're willing to risk someone's life over an alleged minor drug charge or alleged traffic violation?
Can't you at least wait until this pandemic at least eases or goes away altogether? You can still meet your quotas and make up for it at some later date when the nation returns to some level of normalcy.
Certainly, you're not that greedy, insensitive and desperate for money that you've lost your moral compass.
Miss Elmore's life mattered. People shouldn't be basically getting death sentences from the courts just because they have a drug problem. I don't care if or how many times she may have been arrested in the past for the same reason. Her life mattered.
Shame on you all.
Brenda Washington
* * *
While it is tragic that a 30-year-old woman was pregnant in jail to begin with, this 30-year-old had a rap sheet over a page long in Hamilton County alone ranging from aggravated assault, theft, evading arrest, criminal impersonation on top of other countless drug charges of which eight charges were still pending and two of which were from two weeks ago (You can do the math as to the welfare of this baby).
So please quit blaming the system for the poor choices individuals make.
Chris Morgan
* * *
Mrs. Washington,
Just because there is a “pandemic” going on doesn’t give anyone a free pass on tickets or jail. The police department and our justice system is there to protect the citizens.
Also your “quota” information is incorrect. Maybe you should do your research before you post things like this.
Also, whenever a crackhead breaks into your house or you are assaulted in a parking lot then just give them a free pass because of the “pandemic”.
Dianna Bender
* * *
I have lost sleep over this tragedy. I’ve written several replies only to realize that I am but a tiny, proletarian member of the vast peanut gallery and I don’t know enough to opine about what happened with any sort of credibility.
That said, this whole thing is a huge, ugly, tragedy from every direction and you can’t not have an opinion on it. There are hundreds of scenarios and facts that I am not aware of but on the face of it, how can anybody argue with Ms. Washington?
Based on what I have read, this is what happened: Late term pregnant woman got arrested, again, on a petty drug charge. She’s sent to Silverdale where she contracts COVID and is admitted to the hospital where she dies of complications. Sometime during that stay she delivered a child who is now being taken care of by responsible people. Thank God.
That’s all cut and dry and unemotional and I don’t know how that news, presented that way, affects you. Me? I think that at some point in time Morghan Jean Elmore may have been breast fed and was somebody's one and only love and now her child is an orphan.
That completely breaks my heart.
As far as the “system” goes, it’s comprised of people who make decisions. This one looks like a bad one and those folks are likely in agony right now, regardless of how correct they may have been. God help them. God please help everybody involved.
Meantime, leave Brenda Washington alone because she’s dead on right.
Savage Glascock, Sr.