Last year, we were playing doubles pickleball on Memorial Day at Wildwood Correctional Center in southern Alaska. Just as I served on the outdoor court, my opponent yelled.
“No! Carl, don’t jump!” screamed J. Sherwood.
A prisoner named Carl K. Thompson had scrambled into a forbidden area, up the steps of an exterior fire escape and climbed atop a handrail.
Thompson perched 20 feet above the ground, silent, with a determined look on his face.
After a split second of disbelief, I ran toward the sergeant’s office, screaming, “Medical emergency!”
Sherwood, Joshua Erickson, Steven Luten and I dashed toward the fire escape. We tried and failed to talk Thompson down.
“I can’t get the image out of my mind,” Erickson told me when we were eating lunch together the day after Thompson died.
From 2014 through 2022, at least 29 people in state custody died by suicide. In an email to a Prison Journalism Project editor, Betsy Holley, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Corrections, declined to provide any additional information beyond a June 2, 2025 press release announcing Thompson’s death.
Thompson’s death happened quickly, but signs of suffering were evident weeks earlier.
Thompson was my cellie, along with Adam Sullivan. For over a month, Sullivan and I had watched as Thompson suffered a terrible toothache. The pain was so unbearable he could hardly eat or sleep. He had been filling his 16-ounce mug with cold water dozens of times per day, sipping from it every couple of minutes.
“The cold water gives a few seconds of relief before the throbbing pain returns,” Thompson told us.
Each week, for at least 90 days, Thompson actively sought dental treatment, according to what I witnessed as his cellmate and also medical and grievance forms he showed me. Thompson ordered Oragel from the commissary, or prison general store, but he said it was worthless.
I saw him write multiple medical request forms — each time landing him on a waitlist. He even filed a grievance, but it was denied. Thompson looked dejected when he showed me.
A couple hours before Thompson died, I watched him walk off to visit our medical department. He begged for relief from his excruciating toothache. But he was just told to take aspirin, and that nothing more could be done at that time.
During a conversation we had after that visit, Thompson left our cell. “I’m done with this pain,” he said. “Nobody deserves to go through this.”
He carried his mug. We just thought he was headed for another refill.
“I had no idea that was the last time we would speak,” Sullivan said. “The suicide happened within three minutes after he left.”
Sherwood knew Thompson for eight years, and was his cellie for two. Two weeks before he died, Sherwood said Thompson told him he’d rather die than live with his tooth pain. Thompson said he’d never been in so much agony before.
“Carl always told funny stories,” Sherwood said. “If he was your friend, he’d help you out with whatever he could. He was especially helpful with legal work and gave honest advice.”
On June 2, Thompson’s death was announced to the public, but there was no cause of death listed. Carl was the seventh person to die in Alaska prisons in 2025.
It’s hard to blame anyone for Thompson’s death. To be fair, antiquated policies and procedures often hamstring staff from providing adequate medical care.
And yet his death happened after Alaska’s prison system came under fire from journalists and the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter. In July 2024, Prison Legal News ran an eight-page cover story titled, “Alaska’s Prison System: Dangerous, Deadly Yet Repeating Past Mistakes.” The story scrutinized the number of deaths in Alaska prisons and how those deaths are classified. The ACLU accused the corrections system of undercounting deaths. The story also pointed to a lack of suicide prevention efforts in state prisons.
Fellow prisoner Ray Helveston had been Thompson’s friend for 23 years, and saw how pain had come to affect his daily life.
“Carl was goal-oriented, trustworthy,” Helveston said. “Deep in my heart I know this was no accident.”
Extremely lengthy waiting lists and understaffing are also a major concern. A 2021 Alaska ombudsman report concluded that long delays in dental care “were the result of a shortage of DOC dentists and program resources.” The report found that there was one dentist for every 721 patients. That report was later cited in a 2025 lawsuit brought forth by Alaska’s ACLU chapter that sued the state prison system over “dangerously deficient physical, mental and dental health care” in prisons and jails.
Hours after Thompson’s death, investigators arrived at our prison to assess the circumstances of his death. Alaska state troopers finished interviewing me, Sherwood, Sullivan, Erickson, Luten and two other eyewitnesses just after midnight. I remember seeing a trooper holding his pen poised in interest just above his notepad, but he didn’t write a single word down.
Afterward, Sullivan and I were placed together in a different cell overnight while they sorted Thompson’s belongings.
“If they’d just pulled his tooth or given him pain meds, he’d still be alive,” Sullivan said.
I can’t say for sure that his toothache was the sole reason he killed himself. But from what he told us and what we witnessed, the pain drove him to a dark mental state.
I looked out the window, facing where Thompson’s body had landed.
