By Henry Pierson Curtis
Orlando Sentinel
KISSIMMEE — A prisoner hanged himself early Wednesday in the Osceola County Jail. The death happened in the jail infirmary, the same place where another inmate took a corrections officer hostage after getting hold of a loaded 9 mm pistol, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
The back-to-back incidents have prompted county officials to review the jail’s security measures as well as the infirmary’s policies and procedures, county spokesman Larry Krause Jr. said later Wednesday.
The body of Fredie Brookshire was found about 3:30 a.m. in a bathroom of the medical unit, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain.
Brookshire, 41, was arrested Saturday afternoon on charges of repeatedly raping a teenager. He was picked up upon his return to Central Florida from a three-month trip to Kansas, records show.
His victim, who had been living at a campground in Osceola County, was turned over to the state Department of Children and Families after Brookshire’s arrest on 10 counts of raping a child in his custody younger than 17 years old. She told investigators the rapes began when she was 5 years old.
The suicide, the fifth in 10 years at the county jail, is being investigated by the Sheriff’s Office. The 23-year-old jail has been managed by the County Commission since the early 1990s when commissioners removed it from the sheriff’s control.
Sheriff’s detectives are conducting a separate criminal investigation of how inmate Angel Santiago obtained the loaded handgun he used in his foiled escape attempt Monday. Prisoners getting their hands on guns are such a rarity that they are not tracked by the National Institute of Corrections and the American Correctional Association.
U.S. prisons and jails prohibit everyone, including employees and police, from carrying firearms in secure areas where inmates are housed or have access. Visitors must submit to searches to prevent weapons of any kind from getting to prisoners.
Osceola security regulations are so strict that it has the only courthouse in Central Florida staffed by corrections officers where visitors are ordered to remove their shoes and belts before being allowed to pass through metal detectors. The county Corrections Department has 291 employees, including about 167 corrections officers assigned to work inside the jail on Simpson Road.
On Monday night, Santiago, 28, was being escorted to his cell after making a telephone call when he pulled a gun and threatened to kill a corrections officer, reports stated. Santiago is serving two life sentences and faces a third if convicted at an upcoming trial in front of Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr., court records show.
Santiago’s hostage, who has not been identified, was forced to strip in the infirmary and exchange clothes with Santiago so the prisoner would appear to be a corrections officer. The Sheriff’s Office has not disclosed how the jail staff learned of the escape attempt, but other corrections officers confronted and disarmed Santiago, a report stated.
Santiago was transferred from the jail this week to the state Department of Corrections’ Central Florida Reception Center, where recently sentenced inmates are held in east Orange County until they are assigned to a prison. He faces multiple charges of aggravated assault with a firearm and kidnapping for Monday’s escape attempt.
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