Sixth West Virginia Jailer Found Guilty After Detainee Death, Estate Dismisses Claims Against PrimeCare Medical Employees
A former West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) guard supervisor was found guilty on January 27, 2025, on charges related to the fatal beating of pretrial detainee Quantez Burks, 37, at Southern Regional Jail in March 2022. Former Lt. Chad Lester, 35, was convicted by a jury in federal court for the Southern District of West Virginia of making false statements to investigators, tampering with a witness and conspiracy to violate the witness tampering statue.
As PLN reported, fellow guards Andrew Fleshman, 21, and Steven Nicholas Wimmer, 24, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to charges that they conspired to violate Burks’ civil rights. Lester and three other guards were indicted that same month. The other three—former guards Mark Holdren, 39; Cory Snyder, 29; and Johnathan Walters, 35—pleaded guilty in November 2024 to the same charge, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, May 2024, p.22; and Jan. 2025, p.62.]
Charges were filed against two more guards, Jacob Boothe and Ashley Toney, who agreed to plead guilty in July 2024. But they apparently cut a deal with federal prosecutors to testify against Lester and the other three guards who were still facing charges; charges against Boothe and Toney were dismissed on August 9, 2024.
Sentencing for Holdren, Snyder and Walters was scheduled for March 6, 2025, and sentencing for Lester was set for March 13, 2025. See: United States v. Holdren, USDC (S.D. W.Va.), Case No. 5:23-cr-00188. Sentencing for Fleshman and Wimmer was continued to April 8, 2025. See: United States v. Fleshman, USDC (S.D. W.Va.), Case No. 5:23-cr-00133; and United States v. Wimmer, USDC (S.D. W.Va.), Case No. 5:23-cr-00134.
Though the guards brutalized Burks, a civil suit filed for his estate blamed his death on failures by employees of the jail’s now-bankrupt medical provider, PrimeCare Medical. The suit was based on a private autopsy that his family ordered since no autopsy was forthcoming from the state. After the parties went to mediation, Plaintiff apparently settled claims against the PrimeCare employees, who were voluntarily dismissed from the suit on January 23, 2025. Remaining claims against the firm seemed doomed by its bankruptcy. The estate was represented by attorneys Stephen P. New and Emilee B. Wooldridge of Stephen New & Assoc. in Beckley, along with Erik S. Frederickson and Matthew S. Harman of Harman Law Firm in Atlanta. See: Cooper v. PrimeCare Medical, Inc., USDC (S.D. W.Va.), Case No. 5:24-cv-00083.
The DCR was harshly criticized by Burks’ survivors, not only for his fatal beatdown but also for the lack of communication with the family after his death. Burks had been at the lockup less than 24 hours when his fiancée, Latasha Williams, phoned the Raleigh County magistrate to arrange his bond and was casually told that he was dead, she said. Over two and a half years after his death, his mother, Kimberly Burks, said that the DCR had still not contacted her to tell her about it. She promised to help families of other victims of violence in the jail.
“We want to help them get some type of closure,” she said. “If it means the autopsy, if it means needing to get transportation, money to go somewhere, that’s what we want to do, and it’s all going to be in Quan’s name.”
Additional source: WCHS
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