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The news stories we read are oftentimes discarded and pushed aside by the 24-hour news cycle. But we refuse to throw these people away. These are real people. Here are their stories.

Tania Thomas: San Francisco Mother Killed While Visiting Inmate in California

Tania Thomas: San Francisco Mother Killed While Visiting Inmate in California

Tania Thomas, 47, of San Francisco went to Mule Creek Prison in Ione, California for a conjugal visit with her husband and father of a child. She never made it out alive.

Thomas, a 47-year-old mother, was killed on July 1, 2024. She was killed on what was supposed to be the last day of a four-day visit with her husband, Anthony DeSean Curry. Another woman, Stephanie Dowells, was also killed in the prison.

Curry had been in prison for the last 17 years for attempted murder and carjacking.

“She definitely did not let us know that she had gotten married and that they were intimately involved in the last few years,”  Jeanine Rojo, Tania's cousin, told NewsNation, adding that the couple had a son together. “We’ve known him since high school … and he was actually a really cool guy; he didn’t show any red flags and was really laid back like Tania.”

Thomas was last seen on June 30, when she was escorted to the visitation office to take her nightly medication,” according to court records. It would be more than 10 hours before correctional officers checked on Thomas again.

That’s when Curry called the intercom system at 6:30 a.m. on June 31, saying his wife needed medical attention. When officers arrived they found that Thomas was unconscious and had been bleeding from the nose. They also noticed damage to her eye. Curry told them that he had inadvertently poked her in the eye while sleeping.

Thomas’ family said that they want justice as to why correctional officers did not find out about her death until hours later.

Calls continue to mount for an independent investigation as the prison was the site of another conjugal visit death that same year.

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