Prison officials say stemmed from ongoing rivalries
By GUILLERMO CONTRERAS, ROBERT CROWE and SARA INES CALDERON
San Antonio Express-News
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THREE RIVERS, Texas — One prisoner was killed and 22 injured Friday in a riot at a federal prison that appeared to stem from ongoing tensions between rival prison gangs.
Fifteen inmates were taken to hospitals in San Antonio and Corpus Christi, and seven were treated at the medium-
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security facility, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in a news release.
Officials said they quickly controlled the melee, which broke out about 7 a.m., at the all-male facility located in a rural area 70 miles southeast of San Antonio. The community was not in danger, officials said, and no employees were injured.
Three Rivers prison spokesman Dennis Molina said in a statement that the cause of the riot was unknown.
State prison sources, who share information with their federal counterparts, said the fights appear to have been between U.S.-born inmates of Mexican descent who call themselves Chicanos and inmates who are Mexican nationals, known as Paisas in the federal system.
The state sources said initial reports indicate the riot could have been retaliation for assaults or tensions in the federal system between the Texas Mexican Mafia and the Paisas.
A disturbance earlier this month at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Houston involved Mexican nationals and members of another gang of mostly U.S.-born Hispanics, the Texas Syndicate, rivals to the Mexican Mafia, according to sources familiar with the incident. Twelve people were injured in that disturbance.
Traci Billingsley, Washington spokeswoman with the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency has not received any indication that Friday’s incident and the March 11 incident in Houston are related.
Shauna Dunlap, an FBI spokeswoman in Houston, said the agency would not speculate Friday on what happened.
The prison bureau’s regional office identified the dead prisoner as Servando Rodriguez, 38, of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
He was serving a 54-month sentence for violating the terms of a sentence he received for a marijuana smuggling conviction and being in the United States illegally after being previously deported. His projected release date was April 17, 2009, bureau records show.
Richard Wechsler, president of the local American Federation of Government Employees union — and a correctional officer at Three Rivers — said the violence erupted in two separate, but nearby, housing units. Each holds 150 inmates, and one officer monitors those 300 inmates at a time, Wechsler said. The facility houses about 1,160 inmates.
He blamed staff shortages for contributing to the incident.
Deborah Denham, a bureau spokeswoman in Dallas, said staffing levels at the time were in line with other federal medium-security prisons.
Express-News Staff Writer Lomi Kriel in San Antonio and The AP contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 San Antonio Express-News