By Lori Pilger and Peter Breen
Lincoln Journal Star, Neb.
LINCOLN, Neb. — Three inmates are facing a collective 13 new felony charges for an attack on correctional officers at a state prison in Lincoln two years ago during which they allegedly threatened to kill the guards while chasing them with improvised weapons.
By the end of the assault on May 31, 2023, at the Reception and Treatment Center, five officers were injured. One was stabbed and kicked in the head, according to court records filed this week.
The Nebraska State Patrol in April initially booked the men — Eric Ramirez, 33, John Meyers, 39, and Jonathan Gonzalez Salas, 23 — on suspicion of attempted murder. But they weren’t charged with it.
Rather, this week the Lancaster County Attorney’s Office on Tuesday charged them all with multiple counts of second-degree assault.
Meyers and Gonzalez Salas each face three. Meyers also is accused of using a deadly weapon to do it.
Ramirez faces two counts of second-degree assault on an officer, a single count of attempted second-degree assault and three weapons charges.
At a hearing Wednesday in Lancaster County court, each of the men were advised of the nature of their charges, appearing virtually from the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, where they are serving unrelated sentences.
In an affidavit of probable cause, State Patrol Investigator Amanda DeFreece described a chaotic scene and guards coming to each other’s defense against the inmates, one of them armed with a shiv and another with a shank.
DeFreece said it started shortly before 11 a.m. when the guards confronted Gonzalez Salas being in Ramirez’s and Meyers’s cell and not his own.
She alleged that when guards opened the door to remove him, the three whispered amongst themselves before Ramirez told a corporal: “Didn’t I tell you today’s the day I’m going to kill you?”
“And then the three inmates came out of the cell and attacked the guards,” DeFreece wrote.
She said Gonzalez Salas came out swinging at a sergeant, while another corporal went after Meyers, not seeing a large shank in his hand, emptying two cans of pepper spray on him without any apparent effect.
She said that’s when the corporal saw another corporal being chased up the stairs by Ramirez — allegedly trying to stab him with a shiv and threatening to kill him — and went to help him.
“He remembered the first blow to his side and being stabbed by inmate Ramirez,” DeFreece alleged.
She said he fell onto the stairway and Ramirez continued attacking him until another guard tackled Ramirez to get him off and they could restrain him. The guard thought Ramirez was punching him in the head, but a review of video showed he was stabbing him in the back, she said.
Ramirez was pepper sprayed, but it seemed to have no effect on him either. One of the guards later would describe him as “obviously intoxicated.”
DeFreece said, in the fray, Gonzalez Salas tackled a guard getting his cuffs out and stomped on another corporal’s head.
Gonzalez Salas was serving the least time of the three, a 14- to 20-year sentence for second-degree assault and a weapon charge in Saline County .
Ramirez, who at the age of 17 shot and killed two people in a gang-related string of robberies, is serving a 128- to 180-year sentence for first-degree murder and other charges out of Douglas County.
Meyers is serving a 45- to 60-year sentence for manslaughter, robbery and other charges in Douglas County.
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