Roy Hood

Roy Hood had a passion for singing—Elvis was his favorite. 

“He won Elvis impersonation contests,” his daughter Jennifer Wren told North Carolina Health News. “My dad would rent the costume with the solid black and the gold and red rhinestones, he’d wear the wig and sideburns, and he’d sing ‘Burning Love’ and bring the house down. He sang ‘My Way’ at my mother’s funeral because that was her favorite.”

Roy passed away from COVID-19 on October 7, 2020, at the age of 66, just two weeks after he last spoke to Jennifer. Roy was incarcerated at Greene Correctional Institution, a state prison in eastern North Carolina, and had been dealing with a worsening cough throughout August and September. 

It wasn’t until September 24, when he was hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms, that Roy received a COVID-19 test. Two days later, it came back positive. Roy’s passing marked the 17th death in the state prison system—and coincided with an outbreak that prompted Greene to do a mass testing of asymptomatic individuals. Beforehand, the facility had only tested incarcerated individuals if they had a fever or were in several housing units that were deemed “exposed.”

“Someone dropped the ball. Because a month-and-a-half later, my dad’s dead,” Jennifer said.

She had supplied Roy with money to help pay for a Greene Correctional doctor to visit weekly as his cough persisted. He received prednisone, a steroid for treating allergies, but still no test. Six days after Jennifer received a call from Greene that her father was in the hospital on a ventilator, she was driving up from Atlanta to identify his body.

“My goal is to open people’s eyes to the world of prison and death of any kind within a prison setting, and how cold it can be,” Jennifer explained regarding the decision for North Carolina Health News to publish a photo of her father he as appeared in a funeral home following his battle with COVID-19.

“I think the thing I’m going to miss the most is never hearing him sing again,” she said.

This memorial was written by MOL team member Ethan Ehrenhaft with information from reporting by Hannah Critchfield for North Carolina Health News and Clayton Bauman for WITN.