Edward Hill

Photograph of Edward, obtained from the Orlando Sentinel.

Edward Hill, 52 years old, passed away on August 10, 2020, after contracting the novel coronavirus. Edward died less than a year before he was to be released from South Bay Correctional Facility. 

Edward struggled with substance abuse for a long time, but was doing better before his death. While incarcerated, Edward nearly completed a welding class. He passed before he could finish the class.

His sister, Orlando City Commissioner Regina Hill, called for compassion in a press conference after Edward’s passing: “I’m asking the great state of Florida to do the humane thing and make sure that you are protecting our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our fathers, our aunties, our uncles, our children, from COVID-19… [T]hey deserve to have a family member pick them up and give them a second chance. They do not deserve to come back in a body bag.”

“They’re not doing anything to protect our loved ones,” Regina said. “We need to do something about it, we’ve got to do something about it.”

Edward expressed his concerns about the spread of COVID in South Bay, a privately-run prison where at least three other men had died of COVID before him. He told his sister that he was only given one mask, and that he had no hand sanitizer. Eventually, Edward contracted the virus and was moved to a local hospital, where his sister got to be with him. 

However, it was not easy for Commissioner Hill to see her brother, to get medical updates, or to get permission to make end-of-life decisions.

“When I was notified that my brother was in critical condition, he was on a ventilator. And then I was told that he had been hospitalized for 14 days prior to me being notified,” Commissioner Hill said. 

In response to Edward’s poor treatment before death, State Senator Randolph Bracy planned on drafting legislation that would provide families of incarcerated individuals with better and more information on their incarcerated loved one’s health during their time in prison. The legislation would be named after Edward.

Edward was one of thousands of Florida prisoners to catch COVID-19, and one of almost one hundred to die from COVID at the time of his passing.

May Edward Hill rest in peace.

This memorial was written by MOL team member Elizabeth Torres-Griefer with information from reporting by Grace Toohey of the Orlando Sentinel and Matthew Peddie of WFME.