Jason McIntire
Photo of Jason McIntire with his grandmother Marquita McIntire, courtesy of the family via the Baltimore Sun.
Jason Kyle McIntire passed away on May 18, 2020, just a few weeks short of his 44th birthday. A Maryland native with a big, warm smile, he is mourned by his many family members, who say he was compassionate, smart, and well-loved.
One of the few public items on Jason’s Facebook page is a 2015 post encouraging people to send birthday wishes to a teenager celebrating alone. That gesture was true to his personality, as his mother remembers him –– she described Jason as someone who would help anybody. He left behind a large and loving family, including three brothers and a fourteen-year-old sister. Emma McIntire, his sister, told the Baltimore Sun, “I know him, and he would definitely want other people not to go [through] what he went through.”
Jason was incarcerated at Central Maryland Correctional Facility in Sykesville, just a few hours from Snow Hill, the small town on the Eastern Shore where he grew up. His mother, Brenda Bowen, told the newspaper that before the pandemic began, she visited him every week. When quarantine started, they switched to video chatting. During their call on May 11, Mrs. Bowen said, Jason told her he wasn’t feeling well. They planned to talk again on the 13th, but Jason’s call never arrived. Worried, Mrs. Bowen contacted the prison, but she said the staff told her that the administrator who could help her was not there.
This pattern of poor communication continued. Jason’s family was not told when he was moved to a hospital for treatment for COVID-19. (Regrettably, this silence is representative of state policy. A spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Facilities told the Sun that, “for security reasons,” families are contacted only “if the inmate has a threat of imminent death and resuscitate or do not resuscitate orders are required.”) Mrs. Bowen only learned that Jason had contracted the virus when she got a call from the hospital asking permission to perform a medical procedure.
“Just because you can keep a family away doesn’t mean you should,” Mrs. Bowen told the newspaper. She said that Jason had asked for medical treatment three times before being taken to the hospital.
Jason’s father and stepmother shared Mrs. Bowen’s frustration. “The prison blocked the hospital from giving us any knowledge of anything,” Nancy McIntire, his stepmother, said. “He had no one to advocate for him medically.”
Indeed, the medical intervention came too late. Jason entered a coma, and the doctor said that the case was “as bad as it gets.” The family eventually made the difficult decision to take Jason off of life support. His mother said he died less than a week after being admitted.
Jason was only supposed to be incarcerated for five years, but his father told the Sun it felt like he had been dealt a life sentence. “He was a very intelligent young man,” said Jason’s father, Gerry McIntire. “His life went awry. He was doing his time.”
We mourn the loss of Jason McIntire, taken too soon.
Photo of Jason McIntire with his father, Gerry McIntire, and his sister, Emma McIntire, courtesy of the family via the Baltimore Sun.
This memorial was written by MOL team member Annie Rosenthal with information from reporting by Mary Grace Keller and Phil Davis in the Baltimore Sun and public posts Jason made on Facebook.