29-year-old father, Georgia corrections agent dies of COVID-19

PERRY, Ga. — A 29-year-old father and special agent with the Georgia Department of Corrections has died of COVID-19, his family reported Saturday.

Nick Boutwell, of Perry, Georgia, died Friday after battling the virus for over a month. His 1-year-old daughter, Rylee, was hospitalized but recovered.

Boutwell’s wife, Lacy Boutwell, was candid about the fact that she and her husband were not vaccinated.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

“Yes, Nick and I did not get the shot,” she wrote on Facebook. “As many other people in our lives, we believed everything that was being said. Infertility. Nick and I wanted one more child.”

Lacy Boutwell said that she has changed her mind about the shot and will get one for her daughter.

TRENDING STORIES:

• Georgia school district shuts down for 2 weeks because of skyrocketing COVID-19 cases
• ‘That’s my good boy’: Video shows K9 finding missing elderly woman in Forsyth County
• Brother and sister shot dead in southwest Atlanta, acquaintance in custody

“She can not lose another parent because of this terrible disease,” Boutwell said.

Lacy Boutwell said many of her husband’s friends and family have now been vaccinated and that she believes his purpose in life was to help people.

“Even though he has saved and helped so many people in his 29 years of life, he has saved even more while he has been asleep the past 4 weeks,” Lacy Boutwell wrote on Facebook.

Prior to becoming a GDC agent, Boutwell was a K9 officer with the Perry Police Department.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Lacy Boutwell found her husband unresponsive on July 18 after Rylee got sick, according to a GoFundMe set up for the family. When the ambulance arrived, his oxygen level was 53%.

Boutwell was hospitalized in Macon and then airlifted to Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, where he was placed on an ECMO machine, which effectively acts as an artificial heart and lungs.

The community rallied around the family while Nick Boutwell was hospitalized, even staging a drive-by parade for his daughter’s first birthday on August. 12.

His condition quickly deteriorated.

His mother, Robin Boutwell, said her son would be able to donate his organs that were not affected by COVID-19.

“Even in death, Nick is still helping others,” she wrote.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Over $34,000 has been raised for Lacy and Rylee Boutwell.

People get sicker much faster with delta variant, doctors say

©2021 Cox Media Group