By Alan Wooten
The Fayetteville Observer
WINDSOR, N.C. — A man convicted of first-degree murder in Cumberland County 13 years ago has been named in an assault by an inmate leading to the death of a jailer in Bertie County.
Craig Wissink was found guilty of first-degree murder April 1, 2004, and is serving a life sentence. N.C. Public Safety officials said he is being investigated in the death of Sgt. Megan Lee Callahan, a 29-year-old who died about 6:20 p.m. Wednesday following the incident at Bertie Correctional Institution in Windsor.
Callahan was assaulted about 5:30 p.m. Life-saving measures were administered by the medical staff at the prison and first responders.
“I am deeply saddened and send my heartfelt sympathies to Sergeant Callahan’s family,” Public Safety Secretary Erik A. Hooks said in a news release. “We will do all we can to support her family as well as the correctional family. The department will cooperate fully with the law enforcement investigation as well as conduct its own internal investigation.”
The State Bureau of Investigation is handling the probe.
Callahan, of Edenton, had been with the department since January 2012. She was promoted to sergeant in February 2016.
Wissink received a life sentence plus a minimum of 39 months for the shooting of John Lawrence Pruey during an attempted robbery on Cumberland Road on June 27, 2000. He was convicted nearly four years later along with Lawrence Lee Ash.
Wissink’s life sentence has no parole; the additional sentence was reduced by the state Court of Appeals in 2005. Ash is also serving a life sentence. Prosecutors in the 2004 trial said the two went to Pruey’s mobile home with the intent to rob him; each defendant said the other pulled the trigger on a shotgun blast through a door that killed Pruey.
2017 The Fayetteville Observer