When Randy Moore, a road foreman in Leflore County’s District 5, died of COVID-19 on May 13, all county road workers were temporarily relieved of duty without authorization from the Board of Supervisors.
All of the county’s approximately 40 road-unit employees were expected to return to work Tuesday. How the decision to send them home was made resulted in a special board meeting that same day.
Twenty-one of them had been recommended for quarantine because they reported COVID-related contact.
District 1 Supervisor Sam Abraham was disturbed.
“Who made the decision to shut the system completely down?” he asked Jerry Smith, road unit system manager. Smith said he consulted with Fred Randle, emergency management director, and had received a phone call from District 2 Supervisor Reginald Moore.
Moore said he did not make the decision but supports it. He addressed Board President Robert Collins, who had described the decision as a mistake, and said, “Mr. Collins, I think shutting it down was the right thing to do.”
Abraham did not agree. “That bad decision should have been made by the board,” he said.
“We have got to continue to work, but we have got to protect our people,” Abraham said.
Moore said, “I don’t want us to get hung up in procedures when there are lives at stake.”
District 3 Supervisor Anjuan Brown said, “I think the procedure is in place.”
Collins asked the board to authorize a resolution in memory of Randy Moore, which was passed with full consent and will be written by Joyce Chiles, the board’s attorney.
Collins said after the meeting that Randy Moore, a 48-year-old Greenwood resident, had been employed by the county at least eight to 10 years and had last worked on May 5. Moore had been told he had pneumonia, Collins reported. “It’s been a terrible week,” he said.
Randle said District 5’s headquarters and equipment have been cleaned and disinfected.
• Contact Susan Montgomery at 581-7241 or smontgomery@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article incorrectly reported the date of the Board of Supervisors meeting.
