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| Inmate dies during brawl |
| By The Chicago Sun-Times |
| Published: 04/27/2006 |
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An Illinois inmate stabbed during a recent rash of fights in the Cook County Jail died early Wednesday, a spokesman for the sheriff's office said. Jeffery Iniguez, 33, who was stabbed in the back of the head during an inmate brawl Saturday, was removed from life support at his family's request, said Bill Cunningham, a Sheriff's Department spokesman. Iniguez, who was jailed during the appeal of a murder case, died a short time later at Mount Sinai Hospital, Cunningham said. It was the first inmate stabbing death since November 2004, Cunningham said. "We have identified a suspect, but he has not been charged yet," Cunningham said of Saturday's incident, which happened in a common area in Division 11-- a maximum security section of the jail. The brawl, believed to have been gang-related, sent seven inmates to local hospitals. Five of the seven were stabbed with homemade knives known as shanks. The shank used to stab Iniguez was believed to have been made from a strip of metal pried from a fluorescent light fixture, Cunningham said. All of the other injured inmates were treated and later released from hospitals. At least three times this month, inmates have been stabbed in jail skirmishes, but Cunningham said the incident rate is only "a little higher than normal." Often, the fights are "gang-related," but that doesn't mean the sheriff's office plans to separate out inmates by gang affiliation. "We have between 9,000 and 10,000 inmates, and the majority of them have some kind of [gang] affiliation," Cunningham said. "Philosophically, we have never been comfortable with the idea of segregating them based on gang affiliation because then you are bowing to the gang structure." Typically, inmates are assigned to jail divisions based on such things as the severity of the criminal charge, an inmate's age, disciplinary records and whether the inmate has been incarcerated previously, Cunningham said. |
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