Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. — The family of a guard killed during a prison riot in Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday that says inadequate staffing and poor treatment created a dangerous environment at the facility.
Correction officer Catlin Carithers was beaten to death during the May 20, 2012, riot at the privately run Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez. It took hours for authorities to control the riot, which grew to involve hundreds of inmates and injured at least 20 people.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Natchez against Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the prison.
A CCA spokesman didn’t immediately respond to phone and email messages Wednesday.
CCA “created a dangerous atmosphere for the correction officers by depriving inmates of basic needs and treating them inhumanely,” the lawsuit says.
It also says that prison officials were told by an informant in the days before the riot that the situation was becoming volatile and that the officials failed to warn Carithers that he and other guards were on an inmate “hit list.”
Carithers was off the day of the riot but was called in to help, his family has said.
The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates convicted of crimes while being in the U.S. illegally.
The FBI has said in court records that the riot was started by a group of Mexican inmates, known as Paisas, who were angry about what they considered poor food and medical care and disrespectful guards. Paisas are a loosely affiliated group within the prison, without ties to organized gangs, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden has said.
Several inmates have been charged with rioting in the case. One of them, Marco Perez-Serrano, has been identified as the first person to attack Carithers when he hit him with a food tray.
A complaint filed by an FBI agent says prisoners took food service carts out of the dining hall and kitchen and stacked them on top of each other to climb onto the roof, where Carithers was working.
Carithers joined CCA in 2009.
His cousin, Jason Clark, told The Associated Press in an interview after the riot that Carithers was engaged to be married and excited about a recent promotion that took him off weekend shifts.
He had been trained in recent years as part of the prison’s special response team and was called to work Sunday to help with the uprising, Clark said at the time.
The prison’s special response team and the Mississippi Highway Patrol’s SWAT team worked to end the riot while state and area law enforcement officers, some from neighboring Louisiana, helped secure the outside.