GALLIPOLIS (AP) — Families of inmates who died or were seriously injured at a small Ohio county jail in the last year are seeking answers about what happened to their loved ones.

Records obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with former inmates and family members of deceased prisoners show evidence of uneven care and an overwhelmed staff.

“My goal is to change the policies that these people are dying over,” said Gibson’s mother, Sherry Russell, now an advocate for change at the jail. “My son will not have died in vain.”

Her son, 27-year-old David “Tommy” Gibson, killed himself at the Gallia County Jail despite being placed in an isolation cell where he was supposed to be under near constant surveillance.

For now, Russell must wait for the results of an investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation into her son’s death.

BCI would not confirm or deny what the agency is investigating. Russell said she has been interviewed by FBI agents.

The 70-year-old Gallia County Jail is in the basement of the county courthouse in Gallipolis, population 3,600. State inspections have outlined dozens of problems at the jail where four inmates overpowered two female corrections officers and escaped in September.

Gallia County, with a population of around 30,000, struggles like much of Appalachia with poverty, drugs and crime. It’s not uncommon for a jail with a capacity of 21 inmates to be packed with 50 or 60, with inmates handcuffed to chairs in a booking area or wherever else they can be secured, records and interviews show.

Sheriff Matt Champlin did not return multiple phone and email messages seeking comment. Problems at the jail existed long before he took office in January 2017, Champlin said during a Sept. 29 news conference to discuss the escapes.

Joshua Bessey’s family said they first learned he had been injured at the jail in a 3 a.m. phone call Sept. 21 from Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center telling them he was in ICU with a traumatic brain injury.

Family members and Bessey’s girlfriend rushed to Columbus and found Bessey in a coma. Doctors told them his injuries appeared to be caused by blunt force trauma and not a fall that occurred after a seizure, as the sheriff’s office reported. A medical report showed Bessey had a skull fracture and bleeding on his brain.

“The doctors kept asking about an assault,” said Bessey’s girlfriend, Bethany Boggess.

Bessey, 31, said in an interview that his injuries were caused by a sheriff’s deputy pushing him over while strapped tightly in a restraint chair, his head crashing against a sleeping platform in the jail’s isolation cell. The last thing he said he can remember before waking up four days later at Ohio State was a female corrections officer and another deputy lifting the chair upright.

Bessey said a Gallia County sheriff’s detective, accompanied by an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, visited him recently with the detective telling him that if he did not sign a document saying he would not pursue charges against Champlin or his “lawful deputies” for his injuries that Boggess would be arrested. Bessey refused to sign.

Neither the detective nor the ATFE agent returned telephone messages.