Sara Whitaker, Senior Criminal Legal Policy Analyst
Quantez Burks is one of hundreds of people who died in a West Virginia jail or prison since 2020. With the permission of Mr. Burks’s family, the WVCBP created this report in his name to do what the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation and state leaders have not: acknowledge the people who died in their facilities and the ripples of pain created by those deaths.
Kimberly Burks always held her son close. “When he was born, I slept with Quan on my heart. I had to hear his heartbeat.” Until his death, Quan and his mom talked all the time.
Quan had a big heart for family. When he was 6, Quan doted on his newborn brother. A few years later, Quan took pride in potty-training him.
Quan loved to cook. His family called him “Chef Boyar-Q.” His recipe for ribs was famous, and his niece laments that it’s now too late to get him to write it down. He liked being in the garden.
Quan loved his daughter. He died before he could see her graduate with a social work degree from Ohio State. He did not get to walk her down the aisle or play with his two grandchildren.
Quan and his fiancée, Tasha, fell in love as teenagers. They treated themselves with camping trips near the train station in Quinnimont. They would pitch a tent near the river and fish for hours. Quan liked the peace of “just sitting on the river and looking out at it.”
Together they raised Tasha’s baby brother, who was diagnosed with autism and moved in when he was 3 years old. Now a teenager, he still says grace for Quan, asking, “God, please bring my uncle back and I’ll be happy.”
On his back, Quan had tattoos of two faces: his mom’s and Tasha’s. Tasha believes “he knew that we were going to fight for him. I had his back, and he had mine.”
Tasha knows that “Quan’s death helped a lot of people” by bringing attention to the jail crisis. But she says, “It hurt us. I lay in an empty home that we built together. Or I sit in a graveyard and talk and cry and talk and laugh or scream.”
She remembers being told as a child that a redbird was your angel, a loved one that watches over you. “Whenever I see a redbird, I know that’s him.”
For Kim, losing her firstborn son has changed how she relates to her remaining child: “I worry more, I ask questions more. I just don’t know what I would do if something were to happen.” “There are no new chapters with him, no new photos of him.” But, Kim says, “We’ve never forgotten about him.”
Each row in the report below represents a human being – an entire world of hopes, talents, memories, and people loved.
We can prevent future tragedies by sending fewer people into these jails and prisons.
Each of us can help.
With enough determination, you can start a court watch program to bear witness to the injustices that happen every day in empty court rooms. You can help a loved one prepare for an upcoming parole hearing. You can blow the whistle on violence and neglect behind bars. You can organize for changes inside a prison or start a support group in your county for families of incarcerated people.
You don’t have to do any of these things alone.
If you are ready to begin work on any of the above–or if you have information about a person who died in DCR custody who does not appear on this list–please reach out to Sara Whitaker, senior criminal legal policy analyst here.
