Third fatal stabbing at prison
Just two days after News Five ran a story on heightened security measures and efforts to improve overcrowding at the Hattieville Prison Correctional Facility, another inmate has been fatally stabbed at the compound. It is the third death since the beginning of the year. News Five understands that this time the incident did not take place inside medium or maximum security but rather in a section where such violence does not generally occur. Reports are that around 12:30 Sunday afternoon, forty seven year old Lincoln Smith was walking near the Tango Two building under construction in the minimum security area, when he reportedly caught twenty four year old Victor Lanza and another inmate having sex. Smith screamed at the inmates and this alerted prison officers. The officers quickly arrived but as they were escorting Lanza to his cell, the inmate is alleged to have suddenly grabbed a steel rod and stabbed Smith in the neck. The attack triggered an all out assault against Lanza by other inmates who saw what happened. Both Smith and Lanza were rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital but Smith died on the way. Smith who was serving time for resisting arrest and drug possession had only been at the Hattieville Prison since November of 1999. He would have been released in December 2001. As for Lanza, he was serving ten years for robbery and would have been released in May of 2002. News Five tried to go up to Hattieville Prison today for an interview with Acting Superintendent Jennifer Lovell or Director of Programs Wayne Moody, but we were unable to get permission since Lovell was in a meeting all afternoon with Dickie Bradley, Minister in Charge of Prisons. Lovell did tell News Five last week that the inmates held in the Tango buildings are not considered dangerous and those who only have a short time left on their sentences are sent to work in departmental programmes. However, Lovell also explained that last year the prison discovered that some inmates who should not have been relocated had been moved to the minimum-security section.
Jennifer Lovell, Acting Superintendent of Prisons
“The people who are in front are the people who have been in Max and we found that they have very little time left to serve. They may have a year left in the prison or they have a few months left in the prison and we bring them forward, up to the Tangos and these are the folks that would go out and learn agriculture, that will go out and work on a gang. Now we are screening, because at some point last year, some of these people that came from Max, should not have come out to the front. So we have some people from Tangos that are doing much longer time that don’t belong out here and we are in the process of screening those people and correcting that situation.”
It is not known if Lanza was one of those inmates who should not have been moved. Lanza was returned to the prison and has so far not been charged in connection with Lincoln Smith’s death.
