Convicted drug lord Yu Yuk Lai died Tuesday morning, May 11, after 7 days of confinement in a government hospital in Quezon City for critical COVID-19.

Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) spokesperson Gabriel Chaclag confirmed to reporters that Yu Yuk Lai died 9:47 am Tuesday of a heart attack.

She was a confirmed COVID-19 critical case, and was confined at the East Avenue Medical Center (EAMC) since May 4. 

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told reporters has been informed of her death.

Yu Yuk Lai was convicted in 2001 but had apparently continued to run her illegal drugs empire even behind bars at the Correctional Institute for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong.

In 2017, police seized various drug paraphernalia from her jail cell inside Correctional. She also continued to be influential, such that her daughter Diana Yu Uy was found in 2017 to have a police security detail, a privilege typically afforded to government officials.

Yu Yuk Lai is the latest high-profile convict to die in BuCor custody. The most recent before her was lawyer Richard Cambe, former aide of Senator Bong Revilla, who was convicted for plunder in the senator’s pork barrel scam case.

Other high-profile convicts who died recently were convicted rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez, car theft convict Raymond Dominguez and drug convict Jaybee Sebastian, who was a key figure to the government’s drug charges against Senator Leila de Lima.

Aside from high-profile deaths, Rappler found in earlier investigations that dozens of prisoners died without ever being tested for the coronavirus. These lapses raised questions about limited testing in prison facilities, and concerns about not getting a full picture of the state of infection there.

There are no liabilities seen yet on the part of BuCor for these deaths. – Rappler.com