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| D.C. Jail Shooting Injures 4 |
| By Washington Post |
| Published: 12/22/2003 |
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Four inmates were shot inside the D.C. jail yesterday with a small-caliber handgun that appears to have been smuggled into the facility, officials said. Corrections officials could not say who fired the weapon or describe how it got inside a weapons-free facility, where even corrections officers do not carry guns. "This appears to be a case of an inmate-on-inmate assault," said Darryl J. Madden, a Corrections Department spokesman, at a news conference outside the jail. The incident is under investigation, he said. The gun that investigators said they believe was used in the shooting was discovered in a cellblock trash can, said Sgt. Joe Gentile, a D.C. police spokesman. The shootings occurred on the third tier of a housing unit in the southwest corner of the jail. That area houses about 160 of the facility's roughly 2,200 inmates, authorities said. Pamela Chase, chairwoman of the department of corrections unit of the Fraternal Order of Police, said she believes that more than the current 638 uniformed corrections officers -- who are unarmed -- are needed to supervise the jail's inmates. She said there had been no recent incidents at the jail suggesting that a shooting might occur. Corrections officials said they could not remember the last incident in which a gun was discovered inside the jail. They said inmates who enter the jail are searched after being required to disrobe and are not allowed physical contact with visitors. Visitors also are searched, they said, and contractors and employees must pass through a metal detector. The shooting occurred about 1:40 p.m. One inmate was shot through an arm and into his chest; another was shot in a shoulder; a third was shot in a thigh; and a bullet grazed a thigh of the other inmate, according to Alan Etter, a spokesman for the D.C. fire department. Authorities declined to release the names of the victims, who were taken by ambulance to hospitals. None of the wounds was life-threatening, Etter said. |
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