One inmate was killed and at least two others were injured in a mass stabbing at the Fulton County Jail, a police spokeswoman said. CNN by email on Thursday (31).
The situation was “under control” as of Thursday afternoon and an investigation is underway, Fulton County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Natalie Ammons said.
The names of the dead detainee and the two injured people were not released.
This is the fifth death of an inmate at the Fulton County Jail since late July.
Police said Montay Stinson, 40, was found unresponsive in his cell on the night of July 31, “with no clear signs of injury,” according to the office. He was being held on a robbery charge with a $3,000 bond.
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On the night of August 10, a detention officer found 34-year-old Christopher Smith unconscious. Smith was resuscitated and taken to a hospital, the office said in a press release. He died shortly afterwards, on the morning of 11 August.
He was being held on felony and misdemeanor charges without bail, the office said.
On Aug. 17, Alexander Hawkins, 66, was found unresponsive in a medical unit cell and died, the office said. He had been arrested just over two weeks earlier and was being held on a charge of shoplifting on a $5,000 bond.
On Saturday, 34-year-old Samuel Lawrence was found unresponsive in his cell during dinnertime, according to the office.
Lawrence was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. He had been arrested on Dec. 26 and was being held for arson on $30,000 bond.
In each press release announcing the deaths, the sheriff’s office said the county medical examiner’s office will perform an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.
There were nine deaths in custody in 2023, Ammons said. Final autopsy reports were not released for all of them, he added.
During a news conference unrelated to the deaths on Thursday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did not respond to questions about the inmate’s death, but was asked about conditions at the prison.
“As a candidate for district attorney, I stated that we should have had a new prison 15 years ago and we are not going to let people bury their heads in the sand and act like they didn’t know we needed it,” said Willis.
“Atlanta and Fulton County has become very large. She [a prisão] it was antiquated the day they built it,” Willis said, later adding, “People deserve to be housed humanely, even when they’ve been accused of crimes.”
“We need a bigger facility, and it needs to be a facility that treats people humanely,” she said.
“Extremely poor conditions”
Last month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was launching a civil rights investigation into the prison for unsanitary conditions as well as violence against inmates.
In the course of this investigation, the department will analyze the conditions in which inmates are held, their access to physical and mental health care and the violence perpetrated against them, said the CNN previously.
The investigation will also look at whether the prison discriminates against inmates with psychiatric disabilities.
“Following Mr. Thompson’s death, evidence emerged that the mental health unit where he died was infested with insects and that the majority of people living in that unit were malnourished and not receiving basic care,” said Kristen Clarke, Attorney General. Assistant General for Civil Rights of the DOJ, during a press conference in July.
The investigation was triggered, in part, by the death of LaShawn Thompson, who died in the prison’s mental health unit last year “covered in lice and dirt,” Clarke said.
Clarke also spoke of “extremely poor conditions” at the prison, including large holes in walls and flooding of housing units”, and a level of violence at the prison that is “deeply concerning”.
“The sheriff reported that people are ‘making knives in the crumbling walls’ of the main jail,” Clarke said.
Footage from inside the prison, taken earlier this year by Atlanta TV station WAGA, showed flooding, inmates sleeping in hallways, doors off their hinges and crumbling walls.
Former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants were held in the same prison earlier this month, but only one – Harrison Floyd – has stayed there. Floyd surrendered in jail on August 24th and was released on Wednesday, August 30th.
(Jamiel Lynch, from CNN contributed to this text)
Source: CNN Brasil
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