Three dead and a dozen hospitalized after violence at Georgia's Washington State Prison

Caption

Washington State Prison on August 12, 2022.

Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB News

Three are dead and a dozen hospitalized after violence at Georgia’s Washington State Prison on Sunday.

The deaths were initially confirmed to GPB by Washington County Coroner E.K. May, who said it’s rare to see that many deaths at the prison in an entire year. Autopsies will be performed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. 

In a press release, the Georgia Department of Corrections said the altercation began among gang-affiliated inmates on an outdoor sidewalk. A number of injured inmates gained access to a visitation area during active visitation hours, but no visitors were injured. 

Jennifer Fender was one of the visitors. After a year of most Sundays spent with her boyfriend at Washington State Prison, she said she generally knows who to expect to see at the facility. 

"You have officers at the front, at least two always work the front when you first come in and you have to go through the metal detector," she said. 

Then Fender said there are usually at least three more correctional officers in the visitation area to keep an eye on things. But on the Sunday of the violence, she said she only saw one officer in the room. 

Fender said there were about a dozen inmates and their loved ones in the visitation area when she got there. 

"There was a little girl, and she was sitting on her dad's lap," she said. "They were smiling, they were so happy, she was so happy."

When Fender's boyfriend came in, he was anxious. 

"He just seemed a little bit, you, know, tense or something and I said, 'What's wrong?'" Fender recalled days later. "He said, 'They're fighting out there. There's a big fight' and he said 'people are getting stabbed.'"

The Georgia Department of Corrections told GPB the reason Fender only saw one guard was because the others had already been called away to the fight. Three inmates would be killed. 

Jimmy Trammell was one of those killed. His aunt Michelle Lett said Trammell's 10-year prison sentence was only days from ending.

“Three days out; we were planning for him to come home,” Lett said. “He was glad, he was excited. Every other day he was calling, ‘I'm on my way home, I am on my way home. I can't wait to see y'all. I'm so glad I'm coming home.’”

Lett said her nephew had completed his GED while incarcerated and had told family he had a job lined up upon release. Now the family is asking the public for help to pay for his funeral. 

GDC said Ahmod Hatcher and Teddy Jackson, two other incarcerated people, were also killed. 

Meanwhile, Fender and the other visitors heard yelling outside the visitation room. 

"The lady, the guard who had been in the visitation room, she kind of, like, ran out the door," Fender said. 

When the guard returned, she tried to bar the door against the inmates now trying to break in. 

"She couldn't hold that door by herself," Fender said.

Fender said the guard was shouting, imploring the visitors to get out. Fender said some people were confused and didn't register the danger. One woman insisted on getting her coat. The inmates breached the door. Between them and the visitors: one guard. 

"She just kind of jumped between those guys and the visitors that were trying to get out," Fender said. 

As she held a door open for others to pass through, Fender saw the inmates. 

"When I saw them come in the door, a lot of them did have blood on them, but none of them were injured physically, that I could tell," she said. "They were just kind of wild."

But as amped up as they appeared, Fender said they also looked like they didn't know what their next move should be. She did not see them pass the guard. All the visitors made it outside safely. 

Outside, Fender said some people were shaken up. The mother of the little girl who had been so happy on her father's knee was weeping and holding tight to the girl's hand. 

"And I'll tell you what was really terrifying was the fact that we had to leave our loved ones in there with those guys," Fender said. 

The prison remains in a state of lockdown and the incident is under investigation. GDC said it is unlikely visitation will occur the week after the incident. 

A day after the incident, two inmates were injured in a fight at Hancock State Prison.

GDC was the subject of a federal civil rights investigation during the Biden administration. The findings of the investigation, released about a month before the 2024 election, included assertions of “deliberate indifference” to violence on the part of the agency. The report pointed to the lack of correctional officers as one cause. 

This year, GDC leadership told state legislators while they are making progress toward adequate staffing, they are not there yet.