By Guillermo Contreras, Robert Crowe and Sara Inés Calderón
San Antonio Express-News
THREE RIVERS, Texas — A riot Friday morning that appeared to stem from ongoing tensions between rival prison gangs at a federal penitentiary here left one prisoner dead and 22 injured.
Fifteen of the injured inmates were taken to hospitals in San Antonio and Corpus Christi and seven were treated at the prison for minor injuries, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in a news release. Three were returned from the hospitals by the afternoon. The prison remained locked down.
Officials said they quickly controlled the melee, which broke out about 7 a.m., and said the community wasn’t in danger.
“Staff immediately and effectively responded and the incident was quickly contained,” Three Rivers prison spokesman Dennis Molina said in a statement. “The cause of this incident is unknown at this time and an investigation has begun.”
“The institution is secure, all inmates are accounted for,” the statement said.
No employees were injured at the medium-security prison, whose all-male inmate population this week averaged 1,160. A prison guards’ union, however, blamed staff shortages for contributing to the incident.
The prison bureau said it was providing information to Corpus Christi-based FBI agents investigating the matter. Both agencies kept release of details to a minimum.
Neither would say if gangs played a role in the riot, but Richard Wechsler, president of the local American Federation of Government Employees union -- and a correctional officer at Three Rivers -- said he heard gangs were involved.
State prison sources, who share intelligence 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.
Law officers periodically investigate assaults in Texas prisons stemming from such rivalries. A similar type of face-off occurred this month at a Houston jail housing federal pretrial inmates.
“It’s been going on for some years,” said Johnny Santana, a criminal investigator who retired last month from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “The two groups don’t get along.”
Initial reports indicate the Three Rivers rumble could have been payback for assaults or tensions in the federal system between the Texas Mexican Mafia and the Paisas.
The Houston incident, according to knowledgeable sources, involved Mexican nationals and members of another gang of mostly of U.S.-born Hispanics, the Texas Syndicate, rivals to the Mexican Mafia.
“At this time, we have received no indication that there’s any connection between the fights at the Federal Detention Center (in Houston) and the fights that occurred this morning at the institution,” said Traci Billingsley, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington.
“We certainly are not at this time going to speculate as to what happened,” added Shauna Dunlap, an FBI spokeswoman in Houston.
Deborah Denham, a spokeswoman in Dallas for the prison bureau’s regional office, identified the killed prisoner as Servando Rodriguez, 38, who was pronounced dead at 7:40 a.m.
Rodriguez, of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, was serving a 54-month sentence for violating the terms of a sentence he received for marijuana smuggling and being in the United States illegally after being previously deported. His projected release date was April 17, 2009, records show.
An autopsy was ordered, Denham said.
Union president Wechsler said the fighting likely broke out during the breakfast break, when “their cells would be open and they would be roaming around freely.”
The violence erupted in two housing units located near each other. Each holds 150 inmates, and just one officer monitors those 300 inmates at a time, Wechsler said.
He said Friday’s riot could have been avoided with adequate staffing and said his group has lobbied in vain in recent years to convince federal authorities to hire more officers.
The prison bureau’s Denham said staffing levels at the time were in line with other federal medium-security prisons.
“Typically, all institutions are staffed at lower levels overnight because there’s less activity,” she said. “Our staffing levels are higher during day and evening hours. That’s not uncommon.”
In the state system, pay has been an issue in keeping staffing at recommended levels due to federal competition for officers. On Thursday, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice voted to boost salaries for new officers 10 percent and accelerate their move up the pay scale.
The Three Rivers lockup has had problems before. In June 2007, Ernesto “Neto” Rodriguez, an alleged member of the Texas Mexican Mafia, the largest prison gang in the state system, survived a stabbing there.
In January, a racketeering indictment against more than 30 members of the Texas Mexican Mafia charged Jacinto “Cache” Navajar, a purported general in the gang, with attempting to murder Rodriguez. The indictment blames the gang for 22 murders, mostly in San Antonio, since 2000.
Also in January, inmate Adam Villarreal, 29, of San Antonio, walked away from the minimum security component of the facility. He was serving a 13-year term for cocaine distribution conspiracy.
gcontreras@express-news.net
Staff Writer Lomi Kriel in San Antonio and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 San Antonio Express-News