Collins Family Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against TDCJ

The Collins family’s wrongful death lawsuit against TDCJ centers on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s documented security failures that allowed convicted killer Gonzalo Lopez to escape a prison transport bus on May 12, 2022, and murder five members of the family three weeks later at their Centerville ranch. Attorneys for the family formally notified the agency of their intent to sue over the deaths of 66-year-old Mark Collins and his four grandsons.¹ The specific dollar amount sought has not been publicly disclosed.

The Negligence Theory

The claim rests on negligence: that TDCJ staff failed to follow the agency’s own established procedures for searches, restraints, body scanning, and transport security, and that those failures directly enabled Lopez’s escape and the murders that followed. The family does not need to speculate about what went wrong. Two official reviews — one internal to TDCJ, one by the contracting firm CGL Companies — concluded the escape was preventable and cataloged the specific breakdowns.²

The CGL report summarized the finding bluntly: if any one of the required procedures had been followed correctly, the escape likely could have been prevented.¹ For a wrongful death plaintiff, that language does most of the work of proving breach of duty.

The Security Failures Behind the Escape

Lopez was being transported from the Alfred Hughes Unit in Gatesville to a medical appointment in Huntsville. He was serving back-to-back life sentences for capital murder, attempted capital murder, and aggravated kidnapping, with no parole eligibility until 2045.³ He carried two metal weapons, each roughly eight to ten inches long, and a handcuff key hidden in his mouth. He used them to free himself, cut through the caged section of the bus, and stab the driver before taking control of the vehicle.¹

The reviews identified a cascade of procedural failures the lawsuit is expected to rely on:

Officers failed to conduct proper strip searches before transport. A thorough search would likely have uncovered the metal weapons and the handcuff key.
Staff did not run Lopez through the BOSS chair, a body-orifice scanner designed to detect metallic contraband.
Leg restraints were left loose, and a device meant to block access to the handcuff keyhole was not placed correctly.
Two officers logged that they had searched Lopez’s cell when they had not.
Inmates were routinely told their transport dates ahead of time, giving Lopez time to prepare.
Lopez had previously ordered publications on weapons manufacturing and survival techniques. The mailroom denied the orders but never notified facility administrators, which would have triggered heightened security oversight.

Chronic understaffing framed all of it. As of April 2022, 32 percent of TDCJ correctional officer positions statewide were vacant. At the Hughes Unit, the vacancy rate reached 43 percent, and on the day of the escape, 42 of 160 top-priority security posts went unstaffed.² Investigators described a culture of complacency in which staff routinely cut corners on security procedures, with little supervision from wardens or senior officers.⁴

There is also a question about the manhunt itself. The Collins ranch sat inside the perimeter law enforcement was searching. A joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and The Marshall Project later reported that authorities found Lopez’s DNA at a burglarized cabin near the ranch on May 31 but failed to issue adequate warnings to residents in the area.¹ The murders occurred on June 2.

The Victims

The five people killed at the ranch on June 2, 2022, were:

Mark Collins, 66, the grandfather.
Waylon Collins, 18, a recent graduate of Tomball High School.
Carson Collins, 16, Waylon’s brother.
Hudson Collins, 11, Waylon and Carson’s younger brother.
Bryson Collins, 11, their cousin.

Waylon, Carson, and Hudson were the sons of Chris Collins. Bryson was the son of Dustin Collins. Mark Collins’s surviving family includes his wife, Lisa Scarbrough Collins, their three sons — Chris, Dustin, and Matthew — and additional grandchildren.⁵⁶ All five victims were shot and stabbed. Lopez then stole an AR-15 rifle, a pistol, and a Chevrolet Silverado truck from the property before fleeing south, where he was killed in a shootout with law enforcement near Jourdanton the same day.⁷

The Sovereign Immunity Problem

Suing TDCJ is not the same as suing a private defendant. As a state agency, TDCJ is generally shielded from lawsuits by sovereign immunity. The Texas Tort Claims Act provides a limited waiver of that immunity, but only in state court, and only under narrow circumstances involving the use of tangible personal property or motor vehicles.⁸

That waiver shapes the case. Claims tied to the transport bus, restraints, the body scanner, and other physical equipment fit the “tangible personal property” and “motor vehicle” categories the statute reaches. Claims sounding purely in policy decisions, staffing choices, or discretionary judgment are harder. The Texas Tort Claims Act also caps damages recoverable from the state, though the file does not specify the amount that would apply here.

What TDCJ Has Already Conceded

The evidentiary posture for the family is unusually strong for a suit against a prison system, because TDCJ’s own response after the escape reads as an acknowledgment that its procedures failed.

The agency suspended all inmate transports for a week while it reviewed practices.⁹ When transports resumed, TDCJ required a minimum of three correctional officers on every transport bus, enhanced pre-boarding searches, video surveillance on transport vehicles, individual transport for the highest-risk inmates, and expanded on-site medical care to reduce off-site trips. Executive Director Bryan Collier said the agency had “completed a review of the agency’s transportation protocols and will be taking the necessary steps to add additional security measures.”¹⁰

On the personnel side, TDCJ initiated disciplinary proceedings against more than two dozen employees. Three resigned. Fifteen others received discipline ranging from termination to probation or suspension. The disciplined staff included a dozen officers, two sergeants, a captain, a lieutenant, and a major, all found to have failed to properly restrain Lopez, skipped safety checks, or falsified documents.¹¹ No criminal charges against the officers who falsified search logs have been publicly reported.

What Is Not Yet Public

The file records the family’s notice of intent to sue and the factual foundation, but not the case number, filing date, court, named individual defendants, or the amount of damages sought. Those details have not been publicly disclosed as of the reporting available. The family’s public statements have focused on grief rather than litigation strategy. At the funeral on June 11, 2022, at Champions Forest Baptist Church in Houston, Chris Collins told the gathered crowd, “Please know, we’re going to be all right.”⁶

1
NBC News. Many Security Lapses Led to Escape of Texas Inmate
2
CGL Companies. Texas Department of Criminal Justice Lopez Escape Review
3
CNN. Gonzalo Lopez Texas Escape Details
4
Houston Public Media. Reports Many Security Lapses Led to Texas Inmates Escape
5
Klein Funeral Home. Obituary of Mark Collins
6
Houston Chronicle. Funeral Services Today for Tomball Grandfather
7
CNN. Gonzalo Lopez Texas Manhunt
8
GovInfo. Espinoza v. Texas Department of Criminal Justice
9
Axios. Gonzalo Lopez Escape Texas Inmate Transports
10
KBTX. TDCJ Resume Inmate Transportation
11
Louisiana Illuminator. Chronically Understaffed Texas Prisons Set Stage for Prison Bus Escape and Massacre of Family