that prison i was chained in that box i went insane in

Of the 12 inmates on the bus, Rodriguez had by far the longest sentence. Once all the inmates had gotten on, Rodriguez lay down and immediately fell asleep. Damien Rodriguez, a 22-year-old serving 25 years for robbery, sat at the front of the inmate section. Across the aisle from Pineda sat Jesus Reyna, a 44-year-old father of four serving eight years for aggravated assault, and his chain partner, Hector Rivera, who was 37 years old, had one daughter, and was serving two years, also for aggravated assault. If one of them needed to use the toilet in the front of the bus, the other would have to stand alongside. Pineda and Johnson sat sideways, leaning back against the wire mesh caging that covered the windows, kicking up their feet on the fiberglass seats across the aisle, their chain looped over the back of the seat between them. They walked through the door of the steel and plexiglass partition that separated guards and inmates and took seats in the back two rows. “You’re too short to understand,” Pineda told him, and the men chuckled. He was 6’1”, several inches taller than Johnson, and last time he caught chain he hit his head on the air conditioning ducts that hung along the front and middle of the bus. Johnson told Pineda he wanted to sit in the front, but Pineda said he preferred the back. It was cold outside and not much warmer on the bus. Guards in jackets and beanies tossed the inmates’ belongings, which they had packed in potato sacks the evening before, into the baggage hold below the bus. The grass around the parking lot was coated in frost. They boarded the Sanchez bus at around 4:40. Pineda got linked with Terry Johnson, a short and friendly 22-year-old from Dallas serving five years for robbery. The inmates were handcuffed and chained at the wrists in pairs. They’d treated him with respect and given him good jobs, as a butcher and a stock clerk. He’d done two previous stints at Sanchez and knew the warden and some of the guards. Pineda, who was 34, learned he was headed for the Sanchez Unit, 450 miles west in El Paso. The evening before, guards had informed these 50 or so men that they were “catching chain” - being shackled up and sent to a new facility. Inmates arrived from county jails all over the state, fresh off a conviction, and stayed for a few months as the system sorted them out and determined where they’d spend the bulk of their sentences. The men in the holding pen knew the Middleton Transfer Facility in Abilene was a temporary residence. They ate pancakes for breakfast and waited. He shuffled out of his cell, down a cold hallway, and into a holding pen that soon filled up with 50 or so other inmates, all of them in white shirts and pants. 14, 2015, one of the deadliest days in the history of the Texas state prison system. The guards woke Remigio Pineda at 1:30 in the morning on Jan.

That prison i was chained in that box i went insane in