The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

A roommate of Kelly A. Donovan told employees at the center at 3:43 a.m. that Donovan was having difficulty breathing, according to Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the prison system. Emergency medical personnel from the Framingham Fire Department responded within minutes, but Donovan was pronounced dead at 3:58 a.m.

There was no evidence of foul play, Wiffin said, and the death did not appear to be a suicide.

She said prison employees followed emergency response procedures, but Department of Correction officials are investigating and contacted state prosecutors, as they do with all unattended deaths of inmates. State Police investigators assigned to the office of Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. and the Framingham police are investigating, according to a spokeswoman for Leone.

Donovan’s aunt, Susanne Hogan of Westwood, said yesterday that the state medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy but had not determined a cause of death.

The office hoped the results of toxicology tests might prove helpful. Such tests can detect drugs, among other things.

“We really don’t know,’’ she said of the cause. “It’s a shock for our whole family.’’

Located near MCI-Framingham, which is the medium-security prison for women in Massachusetts, South Middlesex is a 200-bed, three-story facility that holds women who pose a minimum risk and are to be released soon.

Many of the women leave the center during the day to work at fast-food restaurants and return at night.

Hogan said her niece worked at a Burger King in Framingham.

Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said that she visited the prison about a year ago and that visitors have great freedom to come and go and do not have to walk through metal detectors.

Donovan was sentenced to a year in prison last December after pleading guilty to charges of larceny and shoplifting, according to Wiffin.

She had been arrested six months earlier in the theft of four pairs of shorts from Filene’s Basement at South Shore Plaza in Braintree and several body sprays from a Victoria’s Secret store. She had been arrested on charges of shoplifting previously, according to records at Quincy District Court.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/05/woman_serving_shoplifting_sentence_dies_at_framingham_prison/