Fabian Tinsley
Image of Fabian, courtesy of his family, by way of WUSA9.
Fabian Tinsley was “a good person,” his niece Regina February told journalists at WUSA9. “He was a family person. I understood him like he was my father.”
Yet despite this closeness, Regina and the rest of her family did not learn of Fabian’s death until 110 days after he passed away on April 16 from COVID-19. They received no word of Fabian’s passing from the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, only discovering the news after viewing a CBS news report.
“He was still a human being, part of our family,” Regina said. “He deserves some dignity, for us, and for the generation of nieces and nephews he never met.”
Fabian, who died at the age of 67, was taken to a hospital when he went into respiratory failure. He passed away ten days later after a battle on the ventilator.
It wasn’t until early August, after the publication of a CBS 17 article on Fabian, that Butner officials called Regina to apologize and let her know that her uncle had been embalmed and buried near the Butner complex. Fabian’s grave remains unmarked and can only be found using a metal detector to locate a corresponding underground pin.
“I was at a loss for words. I started crying because I didn’t know what to do or what to say,” Regina told journalists.
While in August it was presumed prison officials would be transporting Fabian’s remains to a Washington, D.C., funeral home, as of November Regina had not heard back. Even if Fabian’s body does make it to D.C., it will cost nearly $7,000 to examine the body and bury it in a plot next to Fabian’s father and mother. Regina and her family set up a GoFundMe to help cover the costs.
“My father, he’s not going to be at peace until his brother’s home,” Regina said.
“Our plans haven’t changed,” Fabian’s brother Reginald Tinsley told North Carolina Health News. “Get my brother home. That will never change. I’m 70 years old. If I don’t do it, my children would.”
This memorial was written by MOL volunteer Ethan Ehrenhaft with information from reporting by Mike Valerio for WUSA9, Colleen Quigley for CBS 17, and Chloe Arrojado, Liz Howard, and Maya Jarrell for North Carolina Health News.
