Grand Traverse County deputies are currently investigating the death of two correctional officers who were found in their apartment in Michigan on Oct. 25.
53-year-old Tara Kelley and 49-year-old Angelina Winn, who both worked at Oaks Correctional Facility near Manistee, were found dead in their apartment on Walton Road in Paradise Township, near Kingsley, on Friday morning, Detroit Free Press reported.
Currently, Officers with the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Office and the Michigan State police are investigating the matter. No cause of death has yet been revealed.
“The Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office has preliminarily identified the two individuals in yesterday’s death investigation on Walton Road in Paradise Township. Positive identification is still pending from the Medical Examiner’s Office in Kalamazoo,” The County Sheriff’s Office stated on Facebook.
It continued: “The individuals are believed to be Tara Kelley and Angelina Winn, both Michigan Department of Corrections employees at the Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee. The investigation into the cause of the deaths continues, pending the results of the autopsies and the completion of the Michigan State Police Crime Lab report.”
Both women, Kelley and Winn, were senior officers who had served for 19 and 20 years respectively at correctional institutions; first at Pugsley Correctional Facility in Kingsley and, upon its shutting down in 2016, both moved to Oaks Correctional Facility.
Both officers “were valued members of the team at the Oaks and will be missed by many,” department director Heidi Washington said, according to the outlet.
“Please keep the family and colleagues of these employees in your thoughts and prayers,” she continued. “It is in these difficult times that having your MDOC family to rely on is so important.”
Working as a correctional officer is very demanding—physically, mentally, and emotionally—and the list of casualties is long.
2 Inmate Deaths
In related news this week, the Alabama Department of Correction is investigating the death of two inmates.
The prison system said in Friday news release that an inmate at Elmore Correctional Facility died after being found with a head injury.
Officers found 51-year-old Robert Green with a head injury around midnight Wednesday. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a few hours later.
The department said the circumstances that led to Green’s head injury and death are under investigation.
The prison system said no foul play is suspected in the death of another inmate at Holman Correctional Facility.
The prison system says 46-year-old Ricky Gilland of Vinemont was found unresponsive in his cell on the morning of Oct. 18. Staff entered the cell and discovered Gilland was deceased.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
