By Carson Gerber
Kokomo Tribune
BUNKER HILL, Ind. — An inmate at Miami Correctional Facility faces a felony charge of aggravated battery after police say he stabbed a corrections officer last month in the chest through a broken cell window.
Video footage showed that March 9, a corrections officer was speaking to offender Levi Greenup when he reached through the broken window of his cell and stabbed the officer with a handmade shank, according to a probable-cause affidavit.
Investigators said the incident happened in the restricted housing unit where offenders had recently been causing problems, including lighting fires in the unit and breaking out the glass of their cell doors.
Police say the officer was stabbed in the middle of his chest, but the blade hit his sternum which prevented it from penetrating to his vital organs.
The officer was escorted from the unit and flown by helicopter to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, where he was treated for his wounds.
Police say that after the stabbing, officers sprayed a chemical agent into Greenup’s cell before handcuffing him and putting him in a restraint chair in another room.
An Indiana State Police detective said he found Greenup in the cell singing and whistling to himself. The detective said that when he asked Greenup if he could interview him about the incident, Greenup told him he could “make like a rollie and burn,” according to the affidavit.
Officers noted that the cell where Greenup stabbed the officer was covered in soot and smelled of smoke and contained numerous items of burnt clothes and paper.
One inmate who knew Greenup told detectives that he believed Greenup stabbed the officer as a way to simply harm someone and get moved off the unit, according to the affidavit.
Greenup faces a Level 3 felony charge of aggravated battery and a Level 5 felony of battery on a public safety official resulting in bodily injury.
He is serving a 23-year sentence at the prison after pleading guilty in 2019 in Tippecanoe County to armed robbery, carrying a handgun without a license and possession of meth.
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