ST. GABRIEL - They may not be blood-related, but Dana Hebert considers herself a sister to Douglas Barnes.

"I'd known him since young childhood and he didn't really have a lot of support growing up," Hebert said.

Barnes was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in a deadly fist-fight that killed Lance Aydell in 1999. Barnes was 19 at the time.

"He was there and did participate, so he and the co-defendant both got life without parole," she said. 

After serving nearly 25 years at Angola, Barnes requested to be moved to Elayn Hunt due to upcoming renovations at the state pen. He was moved at the beginning of 2023.

"From the time he got to Hunt, it was just chaos."

Barnes was found dead in his cell May, 26 2024.

"I think the most upsetting part about it is, if you ask someone 'What's the most dangerous prison in Louisiana?', people would automatically say 'Angola, without a doubt.' He lived at Angola for more than 20 years, and then less than two years at Hunt, he's dead."

His is one of eight deaths the WBRZ Investigative Unit was told to look into by an anonymous tipster.

The Iberville Coroner's Office has refused to give us the causes of deaths of those inmates, other than to say seven of them are drug-related and one is undetermined.

"It wasn't until a month or a month and a half later when I got his death certificate that it says fentanyl intoxication."

Hebert said almost immediately she began hearing things about his death that weren't communicated to her by the Department of Corrections.

"Some other people are telling me that inmates tried to alert the guards that something was wrong with Doug and they did not respond for several hours."

Early on, suicide had been mentioned as a cause of death, but Hebert says Barnes seemed fine just days before and had something big to look forward to.

Just months before, his co-defendant Jake Ortego had been pardoned by the parole board. Hebert and Barnes' lawyers had been working on getting the same outcome for him.

"We could take it back through the court system the main actor has been released it doesn't seem like this is fair and maybe we could get him re-sentenced to 25 years which he had already completed and get him paroled."

She says that chance, and his life, were taken away from him because of how lax Hunt is about the drug problem.

"That's what they say their mission is - to have custody and control of these inmates. They may have custody, but they don't have control of anything. Not a thing."