Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, run by CoreCivic. Photo by Alan Keays/VTDigger A Bennington man incarcerated in Mississippi died Thursday after he was found unresponsive in his cell. Titus Peters, 42, has been imprisoned by the state of Vermont since 2017.  In 2019, Peters was mov ed to Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi to continue serving his prison sentence for the crimes he committed  in Vermont, according to a statement from the Vermont Department of Corrections.  Corrections staff in Mississippi found Peters unresponsive in his cell at about 12:03 p.m., according to the statement. Medical staff and first responders attempted to save his life, but “Emergency Medical services pronounced Mr. Peters deceased upon arrival,” the statement said.  Vermont contracts with one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the country, CoreCivic, to hold Vermonters in the Mississippi facility to help mitigate overcrowding in Vermont’s in-state prisons.  Currently, 150 men are serving their sentences in Mississippi for the crimes they committed in Vermont. The facility holds more than 2,500 inmates and is over 1,300 miles by car from Burlington.  Peters’ death comes as Mississippi is being pummeled by its worst winter storm in over three decades, which has killed at least 14 people, according to Mississippi Today.  Peters was originally serving 30 years-to-life in prison after a jury found him guilty of committing repeated aggravated sexual assault on a child as well as other crimes, though in 2020 the Vermont Supreme Court mandated that his sentence be reviewed, according to The Bennington Banner.  Nine people died in the custody of the Vermont Department of Corrections in 2025, according to Haley Sommer, a spokesperson for the department. Peters is at least the second person to die in the department’s custody in 2026, according to its press statements. The department’s investigative unit will review Peters’ death, per department protocol, according to a press release.  Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont man dies in Mississippi prison . ...read more read less