Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe
what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove
Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned
away. His son wasn’t there.
“I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ They said, ‘We don’t know.’”
Thus
began a search for his son Mike that lasted more than six weeks.
Desperate for answers, he repeatedly called the prison and the
Mississippi Department of Corrections. “I was running out of options.
Nobody would give me an answer, from the warden all the way to the
commissioner.”
Finally, a nurse at the prison gave him a clue: Check the area hospitals.
After
more frantic phone calls, he found Mike in a hospital in Greenwood,
hours away. He was shocked at what he saw. His son could barely move,
let alone sit up. He couldn’t see or talk or use his right arm. “He’s
got this baseball-size knot on the back of his head,” McIntosh said.
“He’s got cuts all over him, bruises. He has stab wounds. The teeth in
the front are broken. He’s scared out of his mind. He doesn’t have a
clue where he’s at – or why.”
Though he had found his son, McIntosh still had no answers. He said
prison officials wouldn’t allow him to see his son again for months. No
one would tell him what happened – that is, until he received a phone
call from a Southern Poverty Law Center advocate who was investigating
Walnut Grove.
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