Six Florida Inmates Charged with Killing Prisoner

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By Associated Press

Published: 10/09/2002

Six inmates are charged with the fatal beating of a teenage prisoner they had suspected of snitching about an illicit tattooing tool at a jail annex, authorities said.
Chad Littles, 18, of Panama City, died Sunday. He was serving time for failure to pay a fine for possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana, resisting an officer without violence and violation of probation for burglary.
The six inmates made first court appearances Monday, each on an open murder count. Prosecutors or a grand jury will decide the degrees of the charges.
The men had been held at the privately run, minimum to medium security Bay County Correctional Facility Annex.
After the killing, they were moved to maximum security at the main Bay County Jail, also operated by Corrections Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tenn.
Sheriff Guy Tunnell said Littles was killed in a dormitory housing about 80 inmates after a routine shakedown turned up the tattooing instrument.
'The sad thing is that Littles was not an informant,' said sheriff's Capt. Ralph Dyer. 'He was called back into his cell to unlock his locker, which [officers] could not open. The other inmates thought he was a snitch and that he had told [officers] about the tattooing tool.'
When officers let the inmates back into the cell pod, at least four prisoners confronted Littles and began beating him, authorities said.
Littles was the father of an infant son, said his mother, Kathy Hughes.
'He wanted to get into computer classes and was planning to marry his girlfriend,' she said. 'He was full of life and was a typical teenager.'
Littles' father, Calvin Wilson Littles, Jr., also was a murder victim 17 years ago.

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