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| Texas Prison Supervisor Killed in Inmate Attack |
| By Associated Press/Tyler Morning Telegraph |
| Published: 01/30/2003 |
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A supervisor at an Amarillo prison shoe factory died Wednesday about four hours after he was attacked by an inmate who slashed his throat, apparently with a knife. Stanley A. Wiley, 38, first was taken to the infirmary at the Clements Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, then was transferred by ambulance to a hospital in Amarillo, prison spokesman Larry Todd said from Austin. Wiley was pronounced dead about 11 a.m., Todd said. Inmate Travis Trevino Runnels, 26, was charged with murder. A complaint filed in the 47th District Court said Runnels claimed he was reacting to previous disagreements with the supervisor. 'I started boiling inside,' Runnels said in a written statement quoted in the complaint, the Amarillo Globe News reported in its Thursday editions. 'It seems like my mind went on overload and I blanked out and started walking toward him. The next thing I know he was turning around looking at me with his hand on his throat with blood running down. I looked down at my hand and a knife was in it,' Runnels said in the statement. 'We have several witnesses,' Todd said. 'The inspector general says there is significant evidence and eyewitnesses.' About 50 inmates were in the shoe factory when the attack occurred around 7 a.m. Runnels had been working as a janitor in the shoe factory for eight days, Todd said. Wiley, from Amarillo, joined the prison system in June 1994 as a correctional officer at the Clements Unit. In June 2000, he was promoted to the industrial specialist position, where he would oversee inmates making shoes for other offenders in the prison system. He becomes the first Texas corrections officer to die in the line of duty since Daniel Nagle was fatally stabbed in December 1999 at the McConnell Unit in Beeville. A convicted murderer from Harris County serving a life prison term, Robert Lynn Pruett, was convicted of capital murder for Nagle's slaying and is on death row. 'We are still attempting to determine how the inmate had access to the weapon, which may have been a knife used by other inmates who trim the shoes,' Todd said. 'It's very common those inmates are assigned the cutting tools while they are working, but obviously they turn them back in at the end of the day's work.' For 2002 through November, the prison system reported 41 serious staff assaults, meaning they were treated for injuries that went beyond first aid from medical staff. Gary Johnson, executive director of the prison system, promised an extensive and exhaustive investigation into events that led to the killing. 'A brutal occurrence such as this brings sorrow to every member of the TDCJ family,' he said. |
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