Brain-Dead Man Incarcerated

Daniel Provencio lies on his back in a hospital bed, tubes sprouting from his mouth, a thick wreath of gauze on his head. Shot by an officer during a fight at Wasco State Prison, Provencio, 28, has been declared brain dead.

Since the Jan. 16 incident, Department of Corrections investigators have been asking questions at the prison near Bakersfield. Shootings by officers -- in this instance with a large foam pellet -- are rare in California these days and are given greater scrutiny than ever before.

That is small comfort for relatives of Provencio, a father of one from Ventura who was in prison for violating parole and had about five months left to serve. As they watch his swollen face for signs of a miracle awakening, they crave answers about how he wound up in a coma, on the cusp of death.

“We have been given four different stories, and we don’t know what to believe,” said Provencio’s mother, Nancy Mendoza.

On Thursday, Mendoza and Provencio’s brother, sister and aunt traveled to Sacramento in search of help, dressed in white T-shirts bearing a picture of the inmate and his 4-year-old son, Daniel Jr., who lives with his mother in Oxnard.

Outside a Capitol hearing on prison reform, they talked with corrections officials, legislators and inmate advocates, hoping their pleas might pierce what they described as a bureaucratic shroud enveloping the case. They say, for example, that medical decisions -- such as the removal of a drainage tube they believe was preventing swelling of his brain -- are being made without their consent.

“After they removed that tube, his eyes swelled shut and his arm and hand got all puffy,” said Provencio’s brother, Johnny, a security guard in Moorpark. “It made him worse, and they never even asked us about it.”

Mendoza said she has asked prison officials to release her son from custody and move him to a hospital close to her Ventura home. It pains her, she said, to watch him lie -- ankles shackled -- in an intensive care unit crowded with prison guards, who watch him and another ailing inmate around the clock.

“If he’s dead, why are they keeping him?” Mendoza said. “How does a dead man do time?”

Prison authorities declined to discuss Provencio’s condition, citing privacy rules. But Todd Slosek, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said officials were exploring a possible compromise that might allow for an early parole.

“We want to find a compromise that works for the family and everyone else,” Slosek said. Otherwise, Provencio will continue to be cared for by the Corrections Department -- and to be watched by officers despite his comatose state -- until the end of his sentence.

Provencio was shot after a fight broke out in a lounge area as about 40 inmates were being given their dinner trays, officials said. Three prisoners were involved in the altercation, and one of them tried to restrain guards who intervened. The officials would not say what role Provencio played.

After officers ordered inmates to get on the floor, a guard in the control room 8 feet above fired a round, foam object resembling a handball from a 40-millimeter launcher. The balls are considered nonlethal force, said Lt. Brian Parriott, a Wasco spokesman, and are meant to be fired at a person’s extremities.

Officials would not discuss Provencio’s injuries or any other details, pending completion of the investigation. Family members said Provencio was taken to Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield, where a coma was induced so that doctors could operate and relieve swelling in his brain. He relies on a ventilator to breathe and is nourished with a feeding tube, relatives said.

Provencio arrived at the 6,100-inmate prison near Bakersfield in August to begin his second term in state prison. Previously, he served three years and eight months for narcotics violations.

His troubles, his mother said, stemmed from a heroin addiction he developed in his early 20s. After his initial release from prison, however, he was staying clean and working full time with his cousin, laying utility pipe, she said.

“He was a really good kid who got into drugs,” Mendoza said. “But he battled it. He got clean.”

Driving home from a Father’s Day celebration at his aunt’s home last year, he was pulled over and charged with driving under the influence, a parole violation.

“He made a mistake that day,” his mother said. “Now look at him.”