Andre, Dorothy

Tenure Summary

Dorothy Andre began working at Phillips State Prison in 2015 as a corrections officer and climbed steadily through the ranks—sergeant, lieutenant, unit manager—before being named Deputy Warden of Security on January 16, 2026. GPS records attribute three deaths to her tenure in that facility-leadership role, all at Phillips within the first four months of 2026. She is not named as a defendant in any lawsuits. The facility she stepped into had a documented history of homicides and systemic violence, including a 2022 gang-related killing that a DOJ investigation found ignited a multi-prison gang war, but those earlier deaths are not counted among the fatalities attributed to her leadership.

What happened on their watch

Deputy Warden of Security, Phillips State Prison (2026–present)

Andre assumed the deputy warden position on January 16, 2026. Over the following twelve weeks, GPS records list three deaths in custody at Phillips: Rodger Scales, 40, died on February 9; Cornelius Burge, 42, died on February 11; and Rickie Lynn Rutherford, 41, died on April 18. All three are categorized as cause category 6, which Georgia Department of Corrections records typically use to classify homicides.

These deaths occurred inside a prison that had experienced a string of violent fatalities in prior years. According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation, in 2021 inmate Dave Stone was allegedly assaulted in a mental health ward, reportedly with two pipes wrapped in a cloth, and died from closed head trauma. In September 2022, Quafabian McBride, 19, was stabbed to death in a lockdown unit in what the DOJ described as a gang-related killing that set off a retaliatory gang war across multiple GDC facilities, leading to 20 hospitalizations. The AJC report also asserted that officers may have arranged for McBride to be brought to the lockdown unit the day he was killed. Andre worked at Phillips during those earlier incidents, serving as a lieutenant and later as a unit manager, but no deaths were attributed to her leadership until her promotion to deputy warden.

No lawsuits have been filed naming Andre as a defendant in connection with the three 2026 deaths or any other matter. The facility has seen other legal action—including a $700,000 settlement in 2025 over the 2017 suicide of Demitri Carter—but those cases do not involve Andre as a party.

Sources

• GPS records — employment timeline, total deaths attributed to leadership tenure, and death incident data for 2026 at Phillips State Prison.
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — “Ga. prison homicides: a list of those killed in Georgia’s prison system” (2026), containing allegations about the McBride and Stone deaths at Phillips.
• DOJ investigation findings documented in GPS intelligence — linking the 2022 McBride homicide to a statewide gang conflict and systemic security failures at Phillips State Prison.

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Jun 7, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.