DOOLY STATE PRISON

Last updated August 22, 2026.(DS)

Dooly State Prison in Unadilla, Dooly County, opened in 1994 as a medium-security facility for men. Constructed in 1993, it consists of nine main housing units with triple-bunked and double-bunked cells, an open living unit, an isolation/segregation block, and a Fast Track unit. The facility is often used for men who cannot be housed in county prisons, including many sex-offense and medically limited populations. Dooly offers GED, basic education, limited vocational and religious programming. Its original design capacity was 750; GPS's database records a current rated capacity of 1,702 and a population of 1,379 — 81% of the rated figure, but 184% of the original design. Warden Mark Agbaosi leads the facility, with Deputy Wardens Lee Major and Charles Hudson on security, Mable Chaney on care and treatment, and Nequeva Nicholson on administration.

The September 2024 Stabbing and the Warning That Preceded It

The death of Zeary Davis, 31, on September 26, 2024, is the event around which much of Dooly's documented crisis turns. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Davis died on that date and that a county coroner told a TV station he was stabbed to death; a death certificate was not yet available at the time of the AJC's reporting. GPS's own investigative coverage describes the sequence in greater detail: a private citizen wrote to Commissioner Tyrone Oliver on September 23, 2024 — three days before the stabbing — warning that two named Bloods leaders were running an extortion ring in Dorm E1. The letter named Dekito Champ and Marcus Taylor by GDC ID number and asked the Commissioner to move them. It stated that a close-security Blood was living alone in room 215 at the medium-security facility after forcibly removing his roommate, and that another Bloods member was sleeping in a room he was not assigned to. Commissioner Oliver received the letter at his government email address.

On September 26, there was no officer in Dorm E1 when Davis was stabbed. GPS reporting documents that Dooly has no panic buttons; the only way to summon help from E1 was a contraband cellphone. When Davis was dying, no officer had the keys to the three gates between the dorm and outside medical help. Two prisoners kept pressure on his wounds. The prisoners' own volunteer fire crew reached Davis before the shift supervisor did. GPS reporting further documents that Qwinterrious Dodson allegedly stabbed Davis through the heart, and that Dodson has never been charged in the stabbing. In a separate incident, Dodson broke a man's jaw in Dorm E1 on August 3, 2024, admitted the assault to Warden Sampson's face, and was not disciplined.

Staffing Collapse and the Whistleblower Who Documented It

The Davis stabbing did not occur in a vacuum. Tyler Ryals, a former GDC Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) commander with nearly ten years of service across five state prisons, swore out a witness statement on August 1, 2024, warning GDC leadership that prisons were collapsing due to staffing shortages, climbing violence, and contraband. Ryals wrote that he knew he could face discipline for making the warning. He warned that posts once staffed by several officers were being worked alone or not at all, and that an officer might not set foot in a building for five hours at a stretch. He described officers so scarce that inmates had to save them. He warned that gangs were running housing units, telling officers "we're moving so-and-so into this cell" and getting the cell moves approved. GDC records state Ryals resigned twelve days after his warning, on or about August 13, 2024; he did not write a resignation letter.

In August 2024, GDC sent Ahmed Holt, the Assistant Commissioner for the Facilities Division, to meet with Ryals when HR balked at firing him for raising the alarm. Ryals recorded the meeting and gave GPS the recording. On the recording, Holt disputed essentially none of what Ryals had put in his sworn statement. Holt did not deny that lone female officers were holding male prisons. He reframed the staffing crisis as a nationwide issue, stating, "It's not just a GDC issue. It is a system-wide issue. It is a nationwide issue." When told there are not enough officers, Holt said: "If you can figure out how to get 3,000 men into the Georgia Department of Corrections, I'm gonna go get them." Holt offered no plan to address the staffing crisis. Holt also asked Ryals if he was "venting." GPS's systemic findings place this exchange in context: officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%, and the October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities" and faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing."

Gang Control and Classification Drift

The Bloods' presence in Dorm E1 was not an isolated anomaly. GPS's October 2025 investigation, "The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons are Killing People," documented that Dooly, Wilcox, Calhoun, and Washington State Prisons now house 28–30% close-security populations — rates up to ten times higher than other facilities — creating a deadly mismatch. GPS obtained data showing homicide rates at these four facilities run four to five times higher than properly classified prisons, with 33 deaths in 2024 alone, over half under age 50. The DOJ found all four facilities in violation of the Eighth Amendment. GPS's reporting describes accounts that a close-security Blood was living alone in room 215 at Dooly after forcibly removing his roommate — a classification violation documented in the September 23 letter to the Commissioner.

The systemic finding is corroborated at the facility level. GPS's intelligence system records 27 assault-by-inmate signals across 11 cases in five months between March and July 2026, with severity ratings from critical to low. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a pattern of gang-affiliated individuals controlling housing units, extorting other incarcerated people, and facing no disciplinary consequence. The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Approximately 31% of the system's ~49,000 incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average.

The Death Toll

GPS's mortality database records 49 deaths at Dooly State Prison since 2020, the earliest year for which GPS has systematic records. The yearly count: 8 deaths in 2020, 4 in 2021, 5 in 2022, 9 in 2023, 12 in 2024, 9 in 2025, and 2 so far in 2026. Seven of the 49 are classified as homicide. Twenty-eight are classified as unknown or pending cause — a category the DOJ's October 2024 investigative report documented as systematically misused by GDC to obscure homicides. Eleven are classified as natural or medical, two as overdose, and one as other.

The named homicide victims, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, include: Dimitri Merci Jackson, 36, who died January 3, 2023, from a stab wound to the chest; Chad Taylor Roadifer, 45, who died October 27, 2023, from delayed complications of blunt force head trauma sustained months earlier; Brian Lee Wainwright, 59, who died January 4, 2024, in a manner ruled a homicide; Raquon Ja'Veyonte Tucker, 26, who died March 22, 2024, from complications of blunt force head trauma; Carlos Omar Soldiew-Acosta, 38, who died June 22, 2024, from complications due to blunt force trauma, with the coroner telling a TV station he may have been dead for more than 24 hours before his body was found; and Zeary Davis, 31, who died September 26, 2024. GPS's mortality database records Darrow Brown, 58, as a homicide on November 7, 2025 — the death GPS's Classification Crisis investigation documented as a stabbing after Brown accidentally bumped into a gang member while under officer escort during restricted movement.

The AJC also reported that James Yarbrough suffered from uncontrolled diabetes for months at Dooly and died of ketoacidosis in a case alleging medical malpractice. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that Cody Bailey alleges medical staff at Dooly put his father James Michael Bailey's treatment "on the back burner," contributing to his death from sepsis; Bailey, 44, died from sepsis contracted from pneumonia caused by an infected insect bite approximately four months into his sentence. The state's own settlement ledger, obtained through Open Records, shows a $700,000 liability payout tied to Yarbrough's 2020 death.

Medical Neglect and the Limits of Oversight

The mortality data sits alongside a documented pattern of medical neglect. GPS's Tell My Story series includes a firsthand account from an incarcerated person who spent eight years at Dooly and describes watching a cellmate die from untreated cancer over two years, receiving only Tylenol until a lawyer's threat finally prompted action — too late. The account is tagged as not yet fact-checked by GPS. The AJC's reporting on Yarbrough and Soldiew-Acosta, and GPB's reporting on Bailey, provide news-attribution corroboration for the broader pattern of delayed or denied medical care at the facility.

The state's settlement ledger shows a series of smaller payouts tied to Dooly incidents: $25,000 to Shon L. Miller (2016), $5,000 to Eddie J. King (2017), $1,000 to Anthony T. Hill (2019), $3,100 to Rodney McCrary (2020), $3,500 to Thomas Andrew Whittle (2023), and $1,000 to Amos Westmoreland (2023). These are liability payouts recorded in the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger, obtained through Open Records.

Food Safety Scores and What They Miss

The Georgia Department of Public Health inspected Dooly's kitchen on June 23, 2023, June 18, 2024, and March 14, 2025. Each inspection produced a score of 100 — a perfect Grade A. The inspections were routine, conducted by inspectors Joshua Jones, Brenna Maize, and Nicole Hays-Morrison respectively.

GPS has separately documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture. Inmate-maintenance workers at Dooly State Prison have reported to GPS that opening kitchen equipment, including tray-prep tables, reveals active and severe roach infestations — accounts describing thousands of roaches inside kitchen equipment. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food independently corroborated the broader pattern, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024), under 60 cents per meal, versus the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet.

Contraband, Fraud, and the Staffing Pipeline

The contraband cellphone that summoned help for Zeary Davis was not an anomaly. Inmate Magnum Jelani Neely used contraband cellphones to lead a drug ring in the Augusta area from Dooly, contacting drug couriers to deliver meth inside and outside Georgia prisons; the AJC reported he was sentenced to 278 months in September 2024. Abraham Rivas, incarcerated at Dooly, allegedly impersonated a Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputy to defraud a Florida victim into sending $1,000 in payments to his prison commissary account; WALB, Wesh.com, and News-journalonline.com all reported on the scheme, with Rivas claiming that correctional staff at Dooly were aware of inmates running fraud schemes from inside the prison and that he used proceeds to purchase marijuana inside the facility.

The staffing pipeline itself has been a vector for contraband. Julius Deshawn Williams Jr., 29, a corrections officer cadet, was found with four packages of meth hidden in his pants during a routine search in June 2024; a subsequent vehicle search uncovered four more packages and a pistol, totaling 640 grams of 100% pure methamphetamine. WGXA reported that Williams attempted to bring the meth to an inmate while undergoing cadet training. He pleaded guilty in December to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia.

Escalating Violence and Statewide Lockdowns

The violence at Dooly has continued into 2026. GDC reported a gang-related fight at Dooly on March 23, 2026, that left five inmates injured, all with non-life-threatening injuries, contained to one dormitory. On April 1, 2026, a gang-related altercation injured six inmates, three of whom were transported via Life Flight. On May 22, 2026, a gang-related fight left nine inmates injured, all taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries; seven returned by Friday. GDC placed all state facilities on lockdown "out of an abundance of caution" following the May 22 fight, and Dooly, Washington, Ware, and Hancock State Prisons cancelled visitation for Memorial Day weekend. On June 7, 2026, an altercation involving three inmates left one hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. GPS's intelligence system records a concentration of assault-by-inmate signals in April 2026 (11 sources) and May 2026 (8 sources), with family safety concerns peaking in May 2026 (4 sources at critical, high, and moderate severity).

GPS's April 2026 investigation, "Blood on Blood: Georgia Statewide Prison Lockdown," documented coordinated Blood-on-Blood gang violence across the system on April 1, 2026, with at least 12 prisons locked down, life flights dispatched to two facilities, and stabbings at five. The investigation is tagged as clean by GPS's fact-check process.

The Structural Picture

Dooly State Prison is a case study in the systemic failures GPS has documented across the Georgia Department of Corrections. The facility holds 1,379 men in a plant designed for 750. Its population includes close-security individuals housed in a medium-security facility without adequate staffing or infrastructure. Officer vacancies run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide. The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter concluded that GDC leadership "has lost control of its facilities." The DOJ found that sexual assault is "rampant" and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people from sexual harm. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated (7.7%). GDC's own consultants, PREA Auditors of America, reviewed 388 PREA investigation files in May 2022 and found that not one met the law's standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance to the U.S. Department of Justice in the law's two-decade history.

GPS has independently tracked 1,863 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020. At Dooly alone, the count is 49. The facility's DPH food-safety scores remain perfect while inmate-maintenance workers describe roach infestations inside kitchen equipment. The Commissioner received a written warning naming two Bloods leaders in Dorm E1 three days before Zeary Davis was stabbed to death. No officer was in the dorm. No officer had the keys to the gates. Two prisoners kept pressure on his wounds. The prisoners' own fire crew reached him before the shift supervisor did.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WGXA, WALB, Wesh.com, News-journalonline.com, and 13WMAZ; GPS's own investigative coverage, including the Classification Crisis and Blood on Blood investigations and the Tell My Story series; the Georgia Department of Public Health inspection database; the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through Open Records; the U.S. Department of Justice's October 2024 findings letter; the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia; GPS's mortality database and intelligence system records; and on-record testimony from former GDC CERT commander Tyler Ryals, including his recorded meeting with Assistant Commissioner Ahmed Holt.