By Maddie Hanna
The Associated Press
MERRIMACK COUNTY, N.H. — The man who participated in a string of robberies with Michael Addison in the days before Addison shot and killed a Manchester police officer has been indicted on charges he punched a corrections officer in the head.
Antoine Bell-Rogers, 26, was indicted by a Merrimack County grand jury last week on one count of assault by a prisoner, a felony- level offense. According to the indictment, Bell-Rogers punched Cpl. Michael Sampson in the head with his fists at the state prison last December.
Prison spokesman Jeff Lyons said yesterday the incident happened during dinner time at the prison as Bell-Rogers waited in line for food. Sampson, noticing what Lyons described as “some suspicious activity,” went up to Bell-Rogers, and the inmate “swung at him,” Lyons said. He said Sampson’s injuries were not life-threatening.
Bell-Rogers was convicted of participating in a string of armed robberies and an apartment shooting with Addison in 2006. He was arrested after Addison shot Briggs in October 2006 and killed him.
Addison was sentenced to death for Briggs’s murder and is the state’s only inmate on death row. He has appealed his case to the state Supreme Court.
Besides the crimes he committed with Addison, Bell-Rogers was also convicted of assaulting an inmate in the lunch line at the Rockingham County jail in 2007 after he mistakenly thought the inmate was going for a second helping, according to news reports in the Union Leader.
He was later convicted of being a felon in possession of a deadly weapon for having a shank at the Rockingham County jail in 2008, according to the Union Leader.
Lyons said Bell-Rogers is being housed in the prison’s maximum security unit, where he was transferred the day of the alleged attack on Sampson. He said Sampson is now working in the prison’s transitional housing unit.
Another inmate, Kenyor Blackman, was also indicted on one count of assault by a prisoner, a charge that alleges he grabbed Sampson by the waist and held him on Dec. 10, the same date Bell-Rogers is accused of punching the officer. Lyons said yesterday he did not have details on Blackman’s alleged involvement.
Assistant County Attorney George Waldron, who is prosecuting Bell- Rogers, said yesterday he could not comment on the facts of a pending case.
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