By Alexis Taylor
AFRO Managing Editor
“They got the wrong one.”
Standing in a quaint residence on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Kenneth Bridge lays out his paperwork.
Page by page, the U.S. Army veteran tells his story. And he’s clear about what happened— after all, he had 18 months to think, plan and prepare inside the Baltimore County Detention Center (BCDC) before being released.
Bridge was taken into custody in the summer of 2023. He was released in early 2025. Upon returning home, he called the AFRO.
Now, after more than a year in jail, Bridge is far from content with just his freedom. He says he was wrongly imprisoned, given food with mouse droppings and forced to live in unsanitary conditions at BCDC. Then, roughly two months into his time at the facility, an H.Pylori infection began to ravage his body.
“I had a swollen stomach and bloating. It was painful at night and caused me to wake up with bad pain. My stomach bubbled all day long, constipation came in and then – after months of having it- the bleeding started when I went to the bathroom,” Bridge told the AFRO. “They were trying to pass the bleeding off as a side effect of Subutex- but I wasn’t on Subutex. A lot of the guys weren’t on Subutuex- that is a substitute for people who were on opioids and heroin.”
“I lost weight like crazy,” he continued. “I came in at 240 pounds and went all the way down to 202 at the snap of the finger.”
For more than two years inmates and their concerned family members say they warned BCDC officials of a bacteria constantly spreading through the tiers. Their complaints fell on deaf ears.
Karen Carenson, who now runs her own nonprofit to help children via afterschool programming, said she was introduced to Bridge in 2023 through a relative who was also locked up at BCDC. After hearing their symptoms, Carenson told her family member and Bridge to seek medical attention because what she heard was aligned with an H.pylori infection. She suggested H.Pylori tests for them and any others presenting with the symptoms they described: blood in their stool, blood in their vomit, severely bloated stomachs and more.
“On Feb. 20, [2023], I received a call from my family member. He had major pain in his stomach, he was unable to make a bowel movement. He also had burning pains, bloating and nausea,” said Carenson, who was managing a medical office at the time.
Carenson told the AFRO her relative requested an H.pylori test and she placed a call to the warden’s secretary on March 9, 2023 because she was “unable to speak with him directly.” The next day, March 10, she placed another call and spoke with an “Officer Diggs,” who told her she couldn’t speak with the warden unless she went “through the chain of command.” Officer Diggs then transferred her to a person only identified as “Sergeant Washington.”
Ultimately, Carenson said “nothing was ever done” for her family member.
“He was never tested for H. Pylori, and he was actually sent out of the institution with the same symptoms,” she said, of her family member.
“He had symptoms even a year later from 2023. No one has reached out. No one has followed up,” she said.
Though her relative was sent to another facility, she was still worried about Bridge and the other inmates at BCDC. Bridge gave Carenson Power of Attorney rights so that she could help the inmates suspected of having an H.pylori infection from outside of the prison walls.
“They’re there to deal with a crime that they may or may not have committed. Because they’re there– for whatever reason – that doesn’t mean that they should not be taken care of in reference to their health,” said Carenson.
Together, Bridge and Carenson have been building a case. And the documents paint a harrowing picture.
On Aug. 24, 2023, Bridge filled out a #200 form, the official document used to record inmate complaints. In the document, he raises issues about mouse droppings in the food and H-Pylori.
“I’m watching other inmates experiencing the same problem without being allowed to be tested for H-Pylori because of the reason given by nurse staff, that they have to have a chronic ulcer. That’s ‘false,’” wrote Bridge, on his complaint form.
Denial letters sent to the inmates and provided to the AFRO by Bridge state that the “H.Pylori test is ordered for persons with chronic stomach ulcer.” The inmates were told that they did not have chronic stomach ulcers, and therefore, “the test is not needed.”
In some cases, the same denial letter that denies the request for an H.Pylori test also informs the inmate that they will be “starting Pepto-Bismol suspension and Fiber-lax” for their “stomach issues.”
After multiple requests, documents provided by Bridge show he was finally tested on Aug. 4, 2023. He then, like all inmates, had to put in another request to actually see the test results from the screening. He learned what was happening to his body a month after his test was completed.
According to the many BioReference reports provided for the organization associated with “Acct #ML603-8 M2” anything over .99 means a positive result for H.pylori.
Bridge’s test was handled by a lab directed by Dr. Tamera Paczos. His H.pylori Ab., IgA test came back at 2.62 in a report printed on Aug. 9, 2023.
Bridge says he just wants to see “justice to be done” for the men who have suffered.
“They need to go to a specialist and be treated to where they are really healed,” he said. “They are just putting a bandaid on it.”
When asked about the multiple infections reported to the paper in December 2024, Erica L. Palmisano, director of communications for the Baltimore County Government, told the AFRO at the time that there was only one confirmed case of H.pylori at BCDC. When given an opportunity to update the number of reported cases in early 2025, she reiterated that there was only one confirmed case of H.pylori.
When the inmates were told officials were only acknowledging one H.Pylori case, they began collecting their medical records to prove otherwise.
One man physically mailed his test results to the AFRO offices in downtown Baltimore. He tested positive on a test administered on Nov. 18, 2024. The results, from a lab run by Dr. James Weisberger, show his H.Pylori Ab., IgG result at 1.23. His H.Pylori Ab. IgA result was 1.67.
Bridge then showed medical paperwork from when he tested posted in fall 2023, making two cases. But his records and evidence don’t stop there.
Bridge has more than a dozen medical records he says were given to him by different inmates who hope to publicly expose their fight against H.pylori and the treatment of those behind bars at BCDC. He has a stack of documents from inmates who tested positive, but don’t want to be publicly revealed. He also has a collection of denials from inmates who asked to be tested, but were refused H.pylori screening by the BCDC medical team.
The men who spoke with the AFRO in the past 10 months believe the bacteria was spread in part by the toilet water carrying fecal matter from cell to cell.
Though Palmisano denied this was happening with the pipes in Dec. 2024, an inmate sent a copy of a Sept. 4, 2024 complaint form signed by a “Sergeant Durant,” who put in writing what she witnessed with her own eyes.
In the form, Sgt. Durant admitted that she saw the back up herself–even after plumbers were called to address the complaint of sewage from one cell going to another.
The inmate complaint form, known as a “200 form,” was mailed to the AFRO offices with the issuing supervisor’s comments on the paperwork. The document, signed by Sgt. Durant, states that an inmate on the 3H tier in cell #4 complained because when the “toilet is flushed in 3H cell #3 the water and the urine or fecal matter backs up into the toilet inside of 3H cell 4.”
“Sergeant Durant witnessed this for herself. Maintenance has been advised and they have conducted maintenance on this same issue,” writes Durant.
Durant goes on to say the same inmate already “received a response in writing from Captain Copper on 8/19/2024 in reference to this issue.”
The AFRO is in receipt of an “Intra-Department Memorandum” that shows what happened with Captain Copper’s investigation into the matter.
It was determined that “the complaint was unsubstantiated,” and that “no further action will be taken by the office on the complaint.”
EDITORS NOTE: The names “Kenneth Bridge” and “Carol Carenson” are pseudonyms used to protect the identities of the sources who spoke with the AFRO.
