⚠️ Family says 33-year-old Robert Riddle is in constant pain and rapidly declining
🏥 Advocates say national sickle cell care guidelines aren’t being met inside the jail
📄 NAACP report and family letters raise broader systemic questions about inmate healthcare
CRESTVIEW — When the video screen clicked on during a November jail visit, Eunice Mims stared for several seconds before speaking.
Her son, 33-year-old Robert Riddle, bore no resemblance to the man she remembered. His face was swollen, his skin and eyes tinged a yellowish hue.
“He does not look good,” his sister, Michaela Smith, said in an email obtained by Mid Bay News. “His face is swollen, his eyes are yellow, and he is in nonstop pain.”
The visual his mom saw that day has added a growing panic among his family that the Okaloosa County Jail, where Riddle has been incarcerated since 2024, is dangerously unequipped to treat his severe sickle cell disease, and that the weeks ahead may carry risks he will not survive.
Despite repeated warnings, they say, Riddle’s condition has steadily deteriorated throughout 2025. County officials, meanwhile, insist he is receiving adequate medical care and has not voiced concerns to jail leadership.
The conflict unfolding over his treatment reflects a deeper, systemic struggle over the quality of inmate healthcare in Okaloosa County — one now documented not only in family interviews, but in emails to county commissioners, an NAACP report, and interviews with civil rights officials who toured the jail.
Riddle was born with HbSS sickle cell disease, the most severe form of the inherited disorder, in which red blood cells form into hard, sickle-shaped structures that block blood vessels and restrict oxygen flow throughout the body.
Medical experts say the condition causes painful “vaso-occlusive crises,” chronic anemia, tissue death, infections, and risks of stroke, organ failure, and acute chest syndrome, a condition that can kill even young adults within hours.
Before his incarceration, Riddle frequently required:
His mother says he has received none of these in jail.
“He has been in pain crises at least once a month,” said Allison Morris, a sickle cell healthcare navigator and founder of We Reign Sickle Cell Corporation, who took on the case in August 2025. “Sometimes more. And they are not treating these as medical emergencies.”
According to Morris, Riddle has not received a single transfusion since entering the facility, despite relying on regular transfusions before incarceration.
His family says he has not been provided oxygen, even though he used it daily at home.
For pain, they say, he has been given only Tylenol.
The family’s belief that the jail missed early warning signs is supported by a handwritten letter from Riddle to his mother dated September 17, 2025.
The letter, shared with Mid Bay News, describes what appears to be the earliest stage of the infected foot ulcer that would later raise alarms among advocates.
“Hey, Mom! I’m writing you to keep you updated on things,” the letter begins. “And the number one thing that’s important, which is my health. I don’t want you to be too worried — I just want to keep you informed.”
Riddle wrote that he first noticed swelling in his foot sometime earlier in the summer.
“I thought it was just the normal swelling,” he wrote, “but it kept going down, then coming back. Then I started paying more attention to it.”
He then saw something that concerned him.
“I noticed a spot on my foot that looked like it was a scab, but I didn’t do anything for it to be a scab. So I kept an eye on it, and the black spot that looked like a scab started to get bigger and bigger.”
Soon, the pain escalated.
“Then it started hurting, so I kept a closer eye on it,” he wrote. He described seeing the doctor for a follow-up visit related to a pain episode. “I told him about my foot and how it was swelling… but he didn’t even try to take a look at it.”
After Riddle says the doctor declined to examine his foot, Riddle submitted another sick call request.
“I put in a sick call and said how my foot has been causing me pain and how I think that’s what’s causing all my other pains,” he wrote.
However, he said that the next day he was not taken to the medical facility as he had expected.
“I thought that I would at least get carted to medical the next day, but I didn’t. The provider just put me on ibuprofen.”
The pain, he wrote, became unmanageable.
“Just laying on it hurts. It hurts when I walk on that side of my foot. Touching it is uncomfortable, so that’s why it’s keeping me up at night.”
Even then, he said, he planned to submit yet another sick call “so they can see the area that is swelling.”
Despite describing significant pain, Riddle tried to reassure his mother.
“You know I can handle pain,” he joked. “But for me to actually say something is bothering me? LOL.”
Later, he admitted he had contemplated leaving the Anchored Dorm Program, a rehabilitation-focused housing unit that he had been proud to participate in.
“I love this program and I want to graduate from it,” he wrote. “But if I can’t get anything done about my health, I will have to leave this program and go to work pod… so I can get to the hospital a little faster.”
He ends with a sentence that his mother said broke her heart.
“I’ve been praying about my health, but I still have problems.”
To his family, the letter is the clearest documented evidence that Riddle sought help early — and that the system failed him long before the infection worsened.
Long before Riddle’s illness intensified this fall, Okaloosa County Jail had drawn criticism from civil rights groups.
In August 2025, Okaloosa County NAACP President Sabu Williams toured the facility with county officials, including Commissioner Paul Mixon, the jail director, and several senior staff members.
A formal NAACP Jail Visit Summary Report, submitted September 29, 2025, paints a stark picture.
The NAACP’s jail visit report describes a facility strained far beyond its intended capacity. Designed to house 594 inmates, the Okaloosa County Jail held approximately 752 people during the August 2025 tour, nearly 160 individuals over capacity.
As of November 2025, the jail’s average population was 734.
The report states that this overcrowding has forced dozens of inmates to sleep on hard plastic “boats,” low-lying beds only about three inches off the floor. Many of these makeshift beds were placed directly in walkways, leaving incarcerated individuals to step over people sleeping to move through the housing units.
The report notes that overcrowding has also depleted the space available for educational, vocational, therapeutic and reentry programming. At the same time, resources for mental health care remain limited and medical operations are overburdened by the sheer volume of people needing services.
Compounding these issues is the makeup of the jail population itself: roughly 90 percent of those held were awaiting trial, meaning most had not been convicted of a crime. Many were incarcerated simply because they could not afford bail on low-level, nonviolent charges, according to the report.
Williams said what he saw during the tour “shocked him.”
“People were sleeping on the floor, and the pods were crowded,” he said. “I didn’t expect that level of overcrowding.”
He also stated that he had received conflicting information about Riddle’s condition.
“I was told he was doing well,” Williams said. “But the advocates and his family tell a very different story. We need to get clarity.”
He added, “We should not have another inmate die in our county jail because they didn’t receive healthcare.”
Sources also say the jail’s medical facility is currently understaffed and that, given the facility’s current overpopulation, it strains resources. However, the County affirms that the medical department is fully staffed.
Sources also tell Mid Bay News that Riddle hasn’t received the proper medical care he needs until very recently, just in the last couple of weeks.
Morris, who holds formal training as a sickle cell healthcare navigator, said she first became involved on August 9, when she received a call about Riddle’s failing health.
Morris told Mid Bay News that she contacted the jail, spoke with staff, and eventually delivered a comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Management Protocol to the County in October — a document she had written herself after staff informed her there was no existing protocol.
However, in a question sent to Corrections Chief John Moring, he told Mid Bay News via email that protocols exist, that her protocol submitted in October is currently under review, and that they have no information to report to the family.
Mid Bay News also asked for a statement from Okaloosa County Commissioner Paul Mixon, who is the board’s liaison to the jail. He declined to comment, according to Okaloosa County’s Public Information Officer Nick Tomecek.
Morris also told Mid Bay News that she had located a hematologist in Pensacola who was willing to evaluate Riddle and that she had requested that the jail send his records.
As of mid-November, Morris told Mid Bay News that the records had not yet been transferred.
In an email sent to county commissioners on Nov. 16, Morris was blunt: she believes Riddle’s care does not meet national clinical standards.
“This has not gotten better — it has gotten worse,” Morris wrote.
County Commissioner Carolyn Ketchel, who was the only Commissioner who wrote back, forwarded Morris a statement from Moring, who wrote:
“The inmate did not express any concerns regarding inadequate care.”
Moring said he met with Riddle recently in the presence of the jail physician and believed the treatment being provided was appropriate.
He promised to compile a full timeline of Riddle’s care but said some information would be restricted under HIPAA regulations.
However, according to Morris, that timeline has not been presented to them, or the family, as of publication.
To Eunice Mims, the official reassurances feel disconnected from what she sees in her son’s face each time she visits him.
“I’ve cared for him his whole life,” she said. “I can tell when he’s in crisis. And he’s been in crisis for months.”
She said her greatest fear is simple: “I do not want to get a phone call that my son is gone.”
Morris said Riddle’s condition is worsening predictably for someone with untreated sickle cell complications.
“This is not about comfort,” she said. “This is about survival.”
As of Wednesday, the County has released no additional updates regarding Riddle’s condition, the status of his foot infection, or whether a hematologist will evaluate him.
During an interview with Mid Bay News, Morris told us that Riddle was actually in the process of seeing a hematologist on Nov. 17; however, that appointment was canceled for an unknown reason, Morris said.
For now, his family waits — hoping the next phone call brings answers, not another crisis.
The Riddle family, along with We Reign Sickle Cell Corporation, will hold a rally at 1 p.m. on November 20 at the Crestview Resource Center, located at 798 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
Editor’s Note: All medical concerns described in this article reflect accounts of family members, advocates and documents provided to Mid Bay News. County officials maintain that appropriate care has been provided.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
Register or login with Mid Bay News and never get another pop up on our site!
