29 inmates accused of deadly riot in 2018 in South Carolina prison

COLUMBIA, SC – Twenty-nine prisoners were charged with connection to a riot in South Carolina prison that left seven prisoners dead and 22 injured in 2018, the state attorney general announced on Thursday.

The charges were brought against prisoners at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, Attorney General Alan Wilson said at a news conference. He said that three of the prisoners have been charged with murder, while others are facing charges, including first-degree assault and assault by a mob, resulting in death.

The nearly eight hours of prison killings and chaos in April 2018 constituted the country’s deadliest prison riot in nearly 25 years. All 1,200 inmates were put in confinement for weeks after the disturbances at the high-security prison, which houses violent criminals and inmates with proven behavioral problems.

Prosecutors said violence that night broke out between rival gangs after an inmate was killed. Prison gang members then retaliated against the inmate who killed him, the Post and Courier reported. The use of illegal cell phones to communicate led to the “mob riot,” Wilson said.

“The reason we are here today is because of these phones,” said Corrections Department director Bryan Stirling at a news conference on Thursday. Telephones are “essentially a weapon in the hands of prisoners,” he said.

A state audit found several failures by prison officials in dealing with violence on the night of the riot. Stirling said last year that it has implemented security measures to detect cell phones brought in by visitors or prisoners.

Third Circuit attorney Ernest Finney III called the riot investigation “too complicated”. He said the inmates had destroyed the prison’s video recording system to eliminate the evidence.

Some prisoners were reluctant to share what they saw, fearing retaliation, and others refused to cooperate or destroyed the evidence, officials said. The charges issued by the state grand jury were “professionally made and took too long,” added Finney.

The authorities kept open the possibility of additional charges arising from their investigation.

Sporadic violence continued to plague the prison, located some 90 kilometers east of the state capital of Columbia. A prisoner was killed two weeks ago in prison and a policeman was stabbed there earlier this year.