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| CO's Beating Highlights Violence Increase |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 01/16/2006 |
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Assaults on staff are up in one of Ohio's toughest prisons this year, including a recent attack on an officer so severe that a surgeon had to remove skull fragments from her brain. At the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, a maximum-security prison and site of a 1993 riot that killed nine inmates and an officer, the state has recorded 169 attacks on officers this year, a 42 percent increase over last year and the highest in five years. The bulk of the increase consisted of the throwing of bodily substances like feces at officers, according to a breakdown of data collected by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. But physical assaults with minor injuries are also up 72 percent, from 25 last year to 43 this year. Assaults are also up statewide, with 532 attacks on officers so far this year, a 19 percent increase over last year. One of the worst assaults was a Dec. 5 attack at Lucasville on officer Marda Abrams, who was punched in the face, then beaten with her own 24-inch baton, according to union and department officials. Abrams, 43, has been hospitalized since the attack and faces surgery to repair multiple broken bones, including a fractured skull, jaw and nose and numerous broken teeth. The inmate suspected in the attack, Gary Hicks, was transferred to Ross Correctional Institution the night of the attack. A surgeon had to remove fragments of bone from Abrams' brain after the assault, said Curtis Campbell, a Lucasville officer in charge of inmates' afternoon recreation and the head of the prison's union chapter. He called it the most serious assault on an officer since the 1993 riot. The attack follows a September homicide at Lucasville, the first homicide at the prison since the riots, as well as two suicides this year. Despite the overall increase in assaults at Lucasville, serious physical assaults stayed constant - with nine this year and last. The prison system hasn't analyzed the data closely enough to know why assaults are up overall, said spokeswoman Andrea Dean. |
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