Fort, Karl D

Tenure Summary

Karl D. Fort’s GPS personnel record traces a career from correction administration in 2015 to correctional superintendent titles from 2016 through 2020, then to Warden at Washington State Prison from July 1, 2020, to March 31, 2022. Later entries list Warden 1 and Warden 3 titles through 2023, followed by correctional officer roles in 2024–2026, including at Augusta State Medical Prison in 2026. GPS records attribute three deaths to facility-leadership tenures held by Fort, all at Washington State Prison while he held the Warden post: Latavious Lanier Kirkland, David Terry Melton, and Larry Elmo Laroche. A single federal lawsuit in the provided data, Tucker v. Duttlinger, names Fort as a defendant.

What happened on their watch

GPS records do not link any deaths to Fort’s correctional superintendent titles from 2016 through 2020, which appear without a linked facility in the structured data.

Washington State Prison — Warden, July 1, 2020 to March 31, 2022. Three deaths are attributed to this posting. Latavious Lanier Kirkland, 31, died on December 21, 2020. GBI Division of Forensic Sciences records in ME case 2020-1032506 list the cause and manner as undetermined; per GPS records, the GBI medical examiner documented attempting to reach Coroner Hodges to discuss the cause and manner, with no answer. A GPS records determination states the cardiac arrest was most likely caused by medical indifference to untreated hyperkalemia or acute kidney injury. David Terry Melton, 25, died on January 5, 2022. GBI DOFS autopsy 2022-1000382 lists ligature hanging as the cause and suicide as the manner, with toxicology positive for methamphetamine at 0.54 mg/L; a GPS note characterizes the death as adding to what the archive describes as a hanging-suicide cluster. Larry Elmo Laroche, 63, died on March 28, 2022. The Washington County death certificate lists chronic liver disease due to hepatitis, with contributing diabetes and COPD, and manner natural; no autopsy was performed. GPS records state the GBI declined to examine the case and identify Laroche as one of seven Washington State Prison deaths named in a U.S. DOJ Middle District of Georgia CRIPA/Eighth Amendment records request from November 16, 2023. GPS notes this is part of what it terms a GBI zero-autopsies pattern.

No lawsuits in the provided data were filed against Fort while he held the Washington State Prison Warden role. GPS’s intelligence archive contains later Washington State Prison reports, including a January 2026 gang-affiliated disturbance with multiple inmate deaths, but those postdate Fort’s 2020–2022 Warden tenure and are not counted in the three deaths attributed to his leadership.

Litigation

• Tucker v. Duttlinger, No. 1:23-cv-00128, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, filed September 11, 2023, and terminated January 3, 2024. GPS records list the case among lawsuits naming Fort as a defendant; no outcome amount is recorded. Source: CourtListener docket.

Sources

• GPS personnel, death, and intelligence records
• GBI Division of Forensic Sciences records: ME case 2020-1032506; DOFS 2022-1000382; DOFS 2022-1007607
• Washington County Coroner death certificate SF# 2022GA000024854
• U.S. DOJ Middle District of Georgia CRIPA/Eighth Amendment records request, November 16, 2023
• CourtListener docket, Tucker v. Duttlinger, 1:23-cv-00128

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 30, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.