A year after her son died in prison, a Connecticut mother still has no answers

On August 15, 2025, 29-year-old Raymar Thompson died of multiple organ failure while hospitalized at UConn Health in Farmington. Prior to his death, Thompson was incarcerated at Garner Correctional Institute. Before he died, Thompson’s mother, Laresa, was told by another inmate that he was beaten by correctional officers and dragged out of his cell.

“I got a witness inside there,” said Laresa. “[They] called me in prison and told me what happened, and ever since then, I hadn’t seen my son, he hadn’t called me or anything.”

Laresa received that call about a month before his death. He was hospitalized for 28 days before anyone told her he was sick. On August 13, a UConn nurse called Laresa to tell her that Raymar “wasn’t well” and that she “needed to come up there to see him.”

“I’m thinking it had something to do with his diabetes, but when I got there, they said his lungs weren’t working,” Laresa said. “He looked dead to me, and I tried to find somewhere else that could help, but two days later he died.”

Although more than a year has since passed, Laresa said she still has no idea what events precipitated her son’s death, as officials from the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) have repeatedly refused to give her answers. 

“I’m going through a lot right now,” said Laresa, her voice audibly breaking. “I really need help, but nobody’s helping me..”

As soon as she heard the news that her son was hospitalized, Laresa contacted her pastor, Sylvia Reid, who also works as an attorney. Reid told Inside Investigator that she drove Laresa up to UConn Health to see him, as Laresa doesn’t have a car.

“I drive her out there, and that’s when we find out,” said Reid. “He’s out. He’s in a coma. He’s practically dead by the time we get there, and she’s stressed because she was just talking to her son the month before.”

The month prior to his death, Laresa had been frantically calling the prison to find out what had happened to her son, but she was told he was “not there” or “unavailable,” said Reid. Laresa said that Garner’s Warden, Jeanette Moldonado, first told her Raymar couldn’t be reached because he was on disciplinary segregation, but wouldn’t say how long he would be there. Reid said Laresa also called the District Attorney’s Office in “I think, New Haven” to see if he had been transferred to another facility.

“So she’s trying to figure out, well, if he was moved, where was he moved to?” said Reid. “And they wouldn’t tell her.”

Reid, who spoke with the witnesses of Raymar’s altercation with correctional officers, said it was purportedly caused by a lack of proper medical response to Raymar’s diabetes. Laresa said her son also had mental health issues, which was why he was incarcerated at Garner, the state’s designated prison for men with mental illness.

“He was probably being loud because he wanted to eat, he was hungry,” said Reid. “That’s my understanding, from the witnesses who explained it to me; He was hungry, they didn’t want to give him anything to eat. He was telling them, ‘Listen, I’m a diabetic, I need to eat.’ He was a diabetic, and they would not accommodate him at all.”

Raymar allegedly became belligerent after officers denied his requests, causing officers to intervene. Witnesses told Reid that Raymar put up a fight as officers “dragged him out of his cell,” and that officers were seen, “beating him as they were dragging him.” Laresa told Reid that her son had complained to her before the incident about officers’ failure to properly accommodate his diabetes. 

“‘Hey ma, they’re not treating me for my diabetes, they’re not helping me for that’” said Reid. “That was the issue, and now they’re trying to claim, ‘Oh, he died from natural causes.’ How do you die at [such] a young age from natural causes?”

Laresa said she has been given conflicting information regarding his cause of death; a nurse at UConn told her the issue was Raymar’s lungs, and that “whatever happened” to them “happened at DOC,” while paperwork she received from Saint Francis, where he had been hospitalized previously, said he suffered from heart and kidney failure.

“He was only 29 years old,” said Laresa. “He was young. The last time I seen him, he was dancing like there was nothing wrong, but now y’all are saying his chest and lungs are gone. Did somebody beat him in his lungs or what? I mean, I don’t understand.”

Since then, she has repeatedly asked DOC officials for more information but has been denied answers on the grounds that the investigation into his death is still ongoing. Laresa said she speaks with Garner’s Warden, Jeanette Maldonado, “all the time.”

“I still call her to this day,” said Laresa. “I talked to her, and she’s telling me she can’t tell me [anything] until after the investigation. Why is that though? It’s been going on like a year now, so I need to know, she’s still telling me that she can’t tell me. At first, she said ‘[she could tell me] after a year,’ now it’s going on a year and they still can’t tell me.”

There is no law on the books dictating how long DOC has to complete these investigations. Making matters worse, Laresa was unable to retrieve any of her son’s personal belongings. Per DOC Directive 8.2, Laresa should have been “immediately” called by a DOC official to notify her of her son’s death and tell her the “procedures to collect the personal effects of the deceased.” Per the Directive, Raymar’s Unit Administrator should have sent Laresa a letter within a week of his death to ensure she knew these procedures. Reid said that neither of these protocols was followed, and that it was Laresa who called DOC to ask. Laresa said she is “really hurt” by her inability to access his belongings, especially the photos on his phone.

“She tried to reach out several times to the warden over there to get his stuff,” said Reid. “Even afterwards, nothing. They said, ‘Well, you have to fill out this form.’”

Reid helped Laresa fill out the form, but said DOC officials insisted she had a week to provide it to them in person. Laresa does not own a car and lives in Hartford, which is about an hour’s drive to Garner in Newtown. Reid said she “couldn’t take a day off” that week to drive Laresa, as she was busy with clients. 

“How’s she going to come all the way from Hartford?” Reid asked. “She has a small child who goes to school, and she doesn’t have the transportation to do that. And quite frankly, I couldn’t do it.”

In September 2025, Reid wrote a letter addressed to the Ombudsman’s Office, the DOC, the Governor’s Office, and the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives, Matt Ritter (D-Hartford), to try to shine a light on the issue, but received no response. She went down to the Assistant Governor’s Office in person to ask if anything was being done, but was told, “‘Oh, well, you know we get thousands of letters a day,’ blah blah blah.”

“They were all blowing us off,” said Reid. “And so I told her she needed to call the Ombudsman, DeVaughn Ward.”

Ward told Inside Investigator that Reid reached out to him in September and that he attempted to follow up with her in November and December, but that he had not heard back. In September, Reid, who said she primarily works in family and contract law, told Laresa that she didn’t know how to proceed any further.

“I called the Department of Correction myself, on her behalf, and they kept giving us the runaround, if anything at all,” said Reid. “I felt inadequate to help her because the Governor didn’t respond, the Department of Correction didn’t respond, so finally she got a call from the ombudsman, Mr. Ward, and that made me feel better. And then she found a group —an organized group for parents who have kids or young people who have died while incarcerated — in Hartford, so she found some people there to help her. So that’s where I left it. I’m like, I’m good, because that’s what you need more than me.”

Laresa said she had a meeting set with Ward for October 2025 at the Governor’s Office, but when she entered, she was told he wasn’t there. Instead, Laresa said the staff assumed she was homeless and treated her “like a fucking germ,” giving her a pamphlet referring her to shelters before having police escort her out. The whole saga “hurt bad.”

“You’re coming down there to talk about your son that passed away, and all they can give is some papers about being homeless; I’m not homeless!” said Laresa. “I said I’m not homeless! They said, ‘You got any kids?’ I said, ‘Yes. He’s at school.’ She said, ‘Oh, we understand, here,’ and they gave me a piece of paper and I read it, and it’s saying to go somewhere to a shelter to get free showers. How does that sound?”

Reid described Laresa as a single mother with a “limited budget” who has dealt with “some personal issues,” but is a “good person.” She met her through her work as a pastor, during a period when Laresa was “going to church trying to get herself together.” Both Reid and Laresa believe DOC has been discriminatory in dismissing her. In December 2025, Laresa met Ward by chance at a prison rights group meeting. Barbara Fair, co-founder of Stop Solitary CT, was also present.

“She was pouring her heart out, very tearful, desperately seeking help about how her son died,” Fair recalled.

Fair told Laresa she “needed to speak to” DeVaughn and introduced her. Ward told Inside Investigator that after that meeting, he contacted Garner to “seek the return of her son’s property and information about the investigation.” In March 2026, Garner officials told Ward that “no personal property remained available for return, that Mr. Thompson had possessed only state-issued items at the facility, and that valuables associated with his April 16, 2025, admission had been disposed of during the fourth quarter of 2025 pursuant to DOC policy.” Ward said he has also been limited by the status of DOC’s investigation, as he does not have the authority to “compel records related to a pending internal investigation.”

“My last communication with Ms. Thompson was in spring 2026, when I provided her with a list of attorneys she could contact for assistance navigating DOC and pursuing answers about her son’s death,” said Ward. “I recognize how important both her son’s belongings and answers about his death are to Ms. Thompson, and I wish her all the best in her pursuit of justice for her son.”

Laresa said she has tried calling Ward but has been unable to get a hold of him. At Laresa’s request, Inside Investigator asked Ward last Wednesday if he would be willing to attend a meeting with Laresa and Inside Investigator, but did not receive a response. DOC was unable to provide immediate comment for this story.

“He’s dodging me, everybody’s dodging me now,” said Laresa. “I try to call the nurse back, the nurse that was calling me about my son, she’s not even answering me anymore. Everybody just wants me to forget about it because they know that somebody did something wrong to him. I can’t figure nothing out, and I need to know.”

In her conversation with Inside Investigator, Laresa was distraught, depressed, and angered by her inability to get answers. She would like to sue, but knew that Reid was not equipped for correctional lawsuits, though she was appreciative of her support. She said Raymar was troubled, but also “lovable,” and that he didn’t deserve to die. Raymar had a daughter with a girlfriend in Ohio, who has also died; Laresa said she is currently in the custody of her maternal grandmother.

“I don’t know if my son spit on a CO, I don’t know what he could have done, but he didn’t deserve to die,” Laresa said. “I don’t know what happened. If I just know what happened I’d feel better.”

Reid was shocked by DOC’s late notification of her son’s hospitalization, saying timeliness would have been the “bare minimum” and that she’s never seen anything like it. Reid has been a lawyer since “1993 or ’94,” and said that even though she hasn’t done many criminal cases, she felt compelled to help because what DOC put Laresa through “would be a travesty to anybody.”

“They just treated her very badly,” said Reid. “The system really just let her down.”