Prison protest leaves one dead, several injured
Late this morning News Five received a report that there was a riot at the Hattieville prison and that both the police and BDF had been dispatched to the institution. We also received reports that a number of inmates had been rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. When News Five got to the prison we learnt that One inmate was dead and three others had been shot.
When we arrived at the Hattieville Correctional Facility, things had returned to normal, however because the situation was still tense, News Five was told we could not enter the compound, but rather to stay a distance away for our own safety.
Jacqueline Woods
The disturbance started shortly before midday, when prisoners from the maximum-security area were told to go back to their cells, but they refused.
Dickie Bradley, Minister In Charge of Prisons
“A number of inmates attempted to assault a couple of the officers.”
Jacqueline Woods
“How did they manage to do that?”
Dickie Bradley
“Well prisoners will rush you, this is a prison. This is where very, very bad people are housed, and it doesn’t take much to try and rush an officer. In fact, the reports I am getting are that an inmate was running along the veranda in the area that they call the Ramada and hitting the padlocks on the cells and breaking a number of them. So that these cells, which have four/five people, you have inmates coming out and in fact disobeying authority and trying to disarm officers and refusing to listen to the instructions from the officers. So as a consequence of that, the officers are informing me that they had to engage in a show of force. First firing warning shots and then they had to shoot a number of these inmates who were physically assaulting them, according to their reports.”
Jacqueline Woods
“Did the prisoners have any kind of weapons?”
Dickie Bradley
Stones I understand. They picked up stones, but for prisoners to be coming at you from out of the maximum in a menacing manner is a frightening thing. Trying to disarm an officer, who has a powerful weapon, is a serious matter on the prison.”
As a result, four inmates received gunshot wounds. Jeffrey Flowers was hit in the abdomen, Denzil Lemott was shot in the knee, Cecil Gill received gunshot wounds to his arm and leg and Cecil Ramos was gravely injured and died on arrival at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital around 1:00pm.
Dickie Bradley
“Unfortunately the inmate got shot. When I spoke to the assistant superintendent just now, he was within a couple feet of an officer, who was carrying a weapon and was trying to disarm the weapon, according to the report we have. In that process, the weapon in fact hit him somewhere in the neck or somewhere in the head, so that person unfortunately, has been fatally wounded.”
Investigations indicate that the inmates were retaliating against the Department of Corrections because on Thursday two prisoners, Neru Smith and Bert Elijio were the first inmates to receive corporeal punishment, after it was announced that the measure would be re-instituted. The decision was made by visiting justices to DOC.
Dickie Bradley
“The inmates were removed from their cells. They were then taken to a building away from the cells. The inmate was hooded, in order not see, who would be performing the corporeal punishment. I imagined they would have been bounded as well, then they were whipped on their buttocks. Then the hoods were kept on and they returned to their cells.”
Jacqueline Woods
“How many time were they whipped?”
Dickie Bradley
“In the case of Smith, he received within ten and twelve lashes. In the case of Bert Elijio, he received within five and six lashes.”
Both Smith and Elijio were lashed with a tamarind whip because they had stabbed two inmates inside the institution earlier this year.
Reporting for News Five, I am Jacqueline Woods.
