Tyrone Perry #307793 is a 46 year old Black man imprisoned in SC's Perry
Correctional (sic!) Institution [PCI]. He's been imprisoned in SC for 20
years. Throughout this time he's endured medical and mental health neglect
while suffering degenerative brain disease and life-threatening medical
conditions.
Mr Perry has suffers from pulmonary hypertension, diastolic dysfunction and
small vessel disease in his brain. His conditions require ongoing
monitoring and assessments of his blood pressure and heart by on-site
providers and hospital specialists, and chronic care. His brain disease
causes him frequent headaches, serious seizures, and leaves him in danger
of suffering brain aneurisms and early onset dementia and Alzheimer's
disease.
In response to his efforts and complaints to receive the most basic care,
he has been met with hostility and retaliation by the very prison health
professionals who are responsible for his care and who've left him without
treatment.
On July 18, 2025 he went to PCI's medical department with complaints of
tingling on his left side and chest pain. A nurse, Alvarez, took his blood
pressure which read 163/110, then 160/115 - dangerously high readings.
Rather than render him medical aid, Alvarez attempted to conceal the
reading from Mr Perry and send him back to his cell.
Through persistence, Mr Perry was able to gain the attention of Nurse
Practitioner A. Enloe, PCI's chief medical provider. But instead of helping
him, she had him put out of the medical department without treatment. These
nurses were cruelly indifferent to the fact that Mr Perry's high BP reading
could have been symptomatic or indicative of cardiac arrest or a stroke.
To make matters worse, these nurses were/are the cause of his elevated BP
in the first place. They not only refuse to regularly monitor his BP
levels, but further deny his physicians prescribed medications. They have
also obstructed him for months from seeing his heart doctor, Dr Murelli at
the MUSC.
Mr Perry is but one example of multitudes of crass medical indifference and
mistreatment by SC prison medical staff to the often life-threatening
medical needs of prisoners, who have recourse to no other care. A situation
that escapes public scrutiny and accountability because SC prisoners are
stripped of a public voice by their corrupt captors, who subject them to
rules that forbid them from speaking to the media and punish those who try.
In this way these officials monopolize and create false public narratives
that dehumanize and villainize the prisoners and conceal their mistreatment.
I am both witness to and victim of this abuse, having myself been denied
dental care for some two months for a potentially deadly abscessed tooth.
SC prisoners need both an outside voice and support.
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