Carver, Keenan

Tenure Summary

Keenan Carver is an active Georgia Department of Corrections employee whose personnel records trace a climb from line officer to facility deputy. He began as a correctional officer in 2016, was a sergeant in 2019, served as a lieutenant from 2020 through 2022, and as a unit manager in 2023. A single-date record places him as Correctional Unit Manager at Ware State Prison on November 22, 2023. From 2024 he appears as Deputy Warden at Smith State Prison, and from July 16, 2026, as Deputy Warden of Security there.

Seven deaths in GPS's registry are attributed to his leadership tenure, all seven at Smith State Prison. No lawsuit naming Carver as a defendant appears in the records.

The dead, per GPS's registry:

• Donquerius Lamonte Mahone died February 4, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide, age 37.
• Gineli Antoine Gray died February 9, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending, age 31.
• Jaydrekus Cartez Hart died June 16, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide, age 34.
• Richard Jermine Williams died September 7, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Overdose, age 43.
• Orlando Jordan died September 13, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending, age 36.
• Calvin Bernard Craft died December 14, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending, age 34.
• John Jacobs died October 25, 2025, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical, age 77.

What happened on their watch

Ware State Prison — Correctional Unit Manager, November 22, 2023. The records show this title and date only.

Smith State Prison — Deputy Warden (2024–2025), Deputy Warden of Security (from July 16, 2026). Six of the seven deaths fall between February 2024 and December 2024, five of those decedents aged 31 to 43; three causes are still listed as Unknown/Pending.

The defining incident of the tenure was the June 16, 2024 killing of 24-year-old Aramark food service worker Aureon Shavea Grace, shot in the prison kitchen at 4:30 a.m. by inmate Jaydrekus Hart, who then shot himself. The AJC reported that Smith was among the state's most understaffed and violent facilities, with roughly two-thirds of correctional officer posts unfilled — 53 officers at a facility designed for 160. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported investigators' allegation that a drone carried in the firearm, and that GDC had arrested 69 staff, 204 inmates and 554 civilians over contraband in the year ending June 2024. The shooting put all state prisons on lockdown, and Gov. Brian Kemp announced a system-wide assessment by Guidehouse Inc.

Allegations from reporting during the tenure include: that staff were repeatedly warned a gun was on the premises and failed to lock down or search (Deshonda Hagins's July 21, 2025 suit in Fulton County State Court against GDC, per the AJC); that Hart was unauthorized in the kitchen but allegedly favored by staff; that the GDC accused Grace of helping smuggle the gun, which her mother denies; that inmate Nathan Weekes ordered a hit that killed 88-year-old Bobby Kicklighter and was tied to other murders; that Desmond Hill told his mother a day before his death his cellmate had threatened him; that Anthony Joseph Zino III's body was badly decomposed when found; and, per the Marshall Project, that one officer covered 600 men with no working extinguishers and that a decomposing body went unnoticed for five days. The AJC also reported that then-warden Brian Adams was accused of taking cash in a contraband scheme, and that inmate Ricardo Silva ran meth trafficking from segregation.

Under the Deputy Warden of Security title, The Georgia Virtue reported an Atlantic Circuit District Attorney civil forfeiture complaint seeking $115,710.36 from Jennifer Lynn Thrasher, accused of carrying four bundles of methamphetamine into Smith on August 22, 2026, as part of a three-year smuggling operation; an inmate report dated September 16, 2026 described lockdowns or emergency counts at several facilities.

Litigation

• No suit names Carver as defendant. Facility-level actions filed during his tenure: Deshonda Hagins v. Georgia Department of Corrections, Fulton County State Court, filed July 21, 2025, over the failure to act on warnings of a gun; a suit over the death of Hiwatha Abdulcah Hakeem Jr. (reported January 21, 2025) alleging assailants' known history of violence and delayed medical care; and the Atlantic Circuit District Attorney's civil forfeiture complaint of October 27, 2026.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Smith State Prison gun, staffing and homicide reporting, 2024–2025
• Georgia Public Broadcasting — August 30, 2024 Senate study committee coverage
• The Marshall Project — January 10, 2024 officer-shortage investigation
• The Georgia Virtue — October 26, 2026 contraband and forfeiture report
• WTOC — May 1, 2025 report on a former employee charged with sexual assault
• Court records — Hagins suit (Fulton County State Court, 2025); Atlantic Circuit forfeiture complaint (2026)
• U.S. Department of Justice — GDC scrutiny since September 2021, as reported by the AJC
• GPS death registry and facility event records

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Nov 1, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.