Owens, Robert

Tenure Summary

Robert Owens appears in GPS records as a Georgia Department of Corrections employee from 2015 onward, rising through the ranks from corrections officer to sergeant, lieutenant, captain, and unit manager, then to deputy warden at Metro Reentry Facility in DeKalb County beginning November 22, 2023. The structured records attribute 19 deaths to his facility-leader tenure, all at Metro Reentry Facility. No lawsuits as defendant, facility-level intel reports, or news mentions were supplied in the record.

What happened on their watch

Owens’s only facility-leader posting in the supplied data is deputy warden at Metro Reentry Facility. GPS records show 19 deaths attributed to that deputy-warden tenure, spanning January 24, 2024, through July 6, 2026. The decedents listed are Lakeith Shunta Bonner, Richard Kevin Meadows, Keithal Landon Greatheart, Benjamin August Harter, Timothy Crumbley, Larry Jones, Joshua Jean Hanks, Harden Millard Walker, Willie James Johnson, Sammy Bernard Palmer, John Whitfield, Wilson Beavers, Stephen Mott, Rodney Corbin, Robert Rodriguez Johnson, Donald Woods, Samuel Dennis Hunt, Cedric Clement Pierce, and Thomas Allen McKendrick. Ages at death range from 36 to 85.

The records show several distinct patterns. Nine entries include DeKalb County Medical Examiner case notes describing natural manners of death, including cardiac causes, cancer under hospice care, pulmonary embolism, and liver failure. One entry — Timothy Crumbley, October 5, 2024 — is described in medical-examiner notes as an accidental death from a fall at the facility on September 30, 2024, causing a brain hemorrhage. Nine other entries are coded cause category 6 with no explanatory notes in the provided extract.

Among the medical-examiner notes, John Whitfield, who died October 5, 2025, was under hospice care for metastatic stage-4 lung cancer and was found unresponsive in a medical bed; the notes state hospice care was without an onsite nurse. Stephen Mott, who died October 20, 2025, had a pulmonary embolism, and the notes record that cellmates reported he had not been compliant with medications for about two weeks and could not walk to the dining area without losing breath. Larry Jones’s record includes a date correction verified against the GDC official CY2024 Mortality Report.

Separately, the GPS intel-events file documents a January 17, 2026 death of Silas Westbrook at Metro Reentry Facility following a medical emergency after transfer from Washington State Prison. According to those entries, the GDC Office of Professional Standards opened an investigation, and the body was taken to the GBI Crime Lab to determine the official cause of death. Westbrook is not among the 19 deaths in the supplied structured death-attribution extract.

Sources

• GPS structured personnel and mortality records — positions, total_deaths_attributed, deaths_by_facility, and deaths_during_tenure entries
• DeKalb County Medical Examiner case notes as reflected in GPS records, including cases 24-0199, 24-1134, 24-1756, 24-1919, 25-0620, 25-1748, 25-1775, 25-1824, 25-1843, and 26-0002
• GDC Office of Professional Standards and GBI Crime Lab entries in GPS intel-events records, January 2026
• GDC official CY2024 Mortality Report, ORR R018717-012425, referenced in the Larry Jones record

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.