Prisoner dies after stabbing in cell block

He was serving time at the Hattieville Prison for the shooting death of a security guard at the Gourmet Restaurant in 1995. Most recently Raymond Flowers was in the news when his presence at a football game in Belize City prompted the so-called “weekend pass” scandal at the Hattieville Prison. But now, Flowers is dead, the second inmate to die at the prison in less than a month. Because of the nature of his wound, however, his family and fellow inmates are wondering if he received the proper care at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. News Five was in Hattieville this morning.

At one fifty-five, Saturday afternoon, twenty-three year old Raymond Flowers died at the K.H.M.H. Earlier that day he received a stab wound to his right upper arm during a fight in cell 7B located at the maximum security area. Unconfirmed reports are that Flowers and his cellmate, twenty-one year old Jason Williams were arguing when the deceased picked up a knife and started taunting Williams with the weapon.

Wayne Moody, Program Coordinator, Department of Corrections

“Well that is rumored. I don’t have any confirmation on that but it is rumored that there was some kind of tantalization.”

Q: “Where did the knife come from?”

Wayne Moody

“I wouldn’t know.”

Q: “Who had the knife?”

Wayne Moody

“Well the knife was in the cell but I am not sure if it belong to him or the other young man who was his cellmate but the police right now have the weapon that was used.”

According to Wayne Moody of the Department of Corrections, Flowers was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in the institution’s ambulance.

Wayne Moody

“Well I want to categorically state that we were very efficient in getting him out of here as soon as the incident had happened. I had just come on the compound and I sat in my office and they said he had gotten injured and immediately they actually sent him off to the hospital and that would be somewhere about nine, nine thirty to K.H.M.H.”

But some four hours later, Flowers was dead. According to family members they have been told by hospital staff that Flowers was not treated as an emergency case and he lost too much blood and bled to death.

Dr. John Waight, Acting Superintendent of the K.H.M.H., told News Five that Flowers was immediately attended to by the physician on duty and that he was no longer bleeding externally. Flowers was under observation when he took a turn for the worse. Waight said, however, that they have the matter under investigation and are awaiting the results of the postmortem examination. Jason Williams, who was remanded to prison in 1999, remains in police custody. Flowers was serving a total of fifty years for various offenses including manslaughter, escape and possession of unlicensed firearms. On December twenty-eighth another Hattieville inmate Gerald Tasher was stabbed by two prisoners in front of other inmates in the prison’s recreation area. He died of his injuries shortly after arriving at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.