MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. (WOOD) — The prison guard who died Monday of bacterial meningitis was a workout fanatic who had been in good physical health, according to his girlfriend and state prison officials.

Willie T. Jones, 52, a Michigan corrections officer for 20 years, died at the Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital less than a week after getting sick, his girlfriend told 24 Hour News 8.

An inmate at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights, where the guard worked, also contracted the disease but has since recovered.

“Very shocked,” said the guard’s girlfriend Tina Gillard, who lived with Jones in Grand Rapids. “Even the doctors at the hospital were like, ‘Wow.’ The nurses were like ‘Wow,’ because he was so in shape, physically in shape.”

Now, she wants to know if the prison system could have done something to prevent his death.

“How could this have been prevented?” Gillard said. “How can we have caught this sooner? That’s where I’m at right now.”

She said Jones loved his job.

“Very stern, very soft, too,” his girlfriend said. “A wonderful man, amazing, amazing.”

Prison officials on Friday said they’re also looking for answers, working with state health officials and the Centers for Disease Control.

“We’re investigating the entire process and we’re going to look at every piece of this entire incident to see if there is something we could have done,” prison spokesman Chris Gautz said. “Maybe we’ll find something we could have done differently but as you ask me right now, I don’t have that.”

Jones came home sick from his last prison shift early last week: chills, vomiting, later a headache and sore neck, his girlfriend said.

“He thought it was the flu,” she said.

She said they had no idea those were symptoms of bacterial meningitis.

She said she called 911 on Sunday after Jones suffered a seizure. He died the next day at the hospital.

Gautz said the prisoner got sick two days after the guard went home ill. The guard worked in the unit where the prisoner was housed.

“We still don’t know who gave the bacteria to the other,” Gautz said. “It could have been the prisoner gave it to the officer; it could have been that the officer gave it to the prisoner.”

Or, he said, they could have gotten it from someone else.

It’s also possible, health officials said, that their cases were coincidental.

Doctors said the bug that led to the disease — streptococcus pneumoniae — is common in humans and usually won’t make you sick. It rarely leads to meningitis.

If anything, it usually leads to ear or sinus infections.

They said it’s spread by coughing or sneezing and not through surface contact. The best way to prevent it is to get vaccinated.

“That is the most common meningitis in adults, not to say that it’s common, but it’s the most common that occurs in adults,” Muskegon County Health Director Dr. Douglas Hoch said.

After the two bacterial meningitis cases, the Department of Corrections cleaned the prison with bleach and offered protective masks to prisoners and officers, Gautz said.

Health investigators are testing to see if the guard and prisoner had the same strain of the disease.

“Even though it’s the same bug, there are some tests they can do to see how closely related they are,” Hoch said. “This could take a while.”