76-Year-Old Woman Sent Back to Prison After She Didn’t Answer Her Phone During a Class

Last year, the Trump administration freed over 4,500 detainees to prevent them from catching COVID-19. Gwen Levi, 76, was one of the people who qualified for the early dismissal. Levi was sentenced to 16 years in prison for conspiring to sell at least one kilogram of heroin.

Levi has since been re-incarcerated. This time, she was arrested for not answering her phone when officers tried to contact her. At the time, Levi was said to be in a computer word-processing class in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Her attorney Sapna Mirchandani informed The Washington Post that she is currently being held in a Washington, D.C. jail, awaiting transfer to a federal facility.

“There’s no question she was in class,” Mirchandani said. “As I was told, because she could have been robbing a bank, they’re going to treat her as if she was robbing a bank.”

According to her ankle monitor, Levi was not where she was supposed to be, the Federal Bureau of Prisons stated in the incident report. Authorities dubbed Ms. Levi’s unapproved trip an “escape” after she didn’t answer the phone for several hours.

“I feel like I was attempting to do all the right things,” Levi said through her attorney. “Breaking rules is not who I am. I tried to explain what happened and to tell the truth. At no time did I think I wasn’t supposed to go to that class. I apologize to my mother and my family for what this is doing to them.”