Alabama’s prisons flow with needless deaths yet again. We know one of the reasons why.

by Unheard Voices OTCJ

Elmore – “Alabama prison officials are investigating the beating death of an inmate who was attacked by other prisoners Thursday – the second deadly attack on a state prisoner within 24 hours,” reports the Montgomery Advertiser Feb. 19 in a story headlined, “State inmate beaten to death in 2nd such killing in 24 hours.”

“In the most recent case,” the story continues, “David Sanders, 41, was found badly beaten and unresponsive in a dorm of the Elmore Correctional Facility on Thursday, the Alabama Department of Corrections said.

“Sanders was flown to a Montgomery hospital, where he died of his injuries Saturday.

“Four inmates are suspected in the death, authorities said. Those inmates have been moved from the Elmore Correctional Facility to a maximum security prison, authorities said.

“In a separate case, authorities say 35-year-old Grant Mickens on Thursday died shortly after he was found with multiple stab wounds in the prison yard of Staton Correctional Facility. [Elmore is the site of three Alabama state prisons: Staton, Draper Correctional Facility, which is immediately adjacent, and the Elmore Correctional Facility about a mile to the east.] A 31-year-old inmate was named as a suspect in that killing. A makeshift knife was recovered in that case, authorities said.

“Alabama prisons have seen an increase in violence among inmates in the last recorded year, according to corrections department statistics.

“There were 2,111 violent inmate-on-inmate incidents in fiscal year 2016, an 18 percent increase from the previous year. Confrontations that resulted in serious inmate injuries have also jumped about 65 percent during the same period.”

This is the fourth alleged murder at Elmore Correctional Facility in the past 24 months. The warden at this facility, Joseph Headly, is averaging one murder every six months. These statistics are staggering.

Last year in October, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was launching an investigation into constitutional violations within Alabama’s prisons. One of their concerns was the violence in these prisons.

Yet there has been no sign the Department of Justice is conducting an investigation at all.

We, however, have been conducting our own investigation and have uncovered multiple incriminating facts that have led to the needless deaths at what is called “Hellmore,” the now notorious medium security prison Elmore Correctional Facility.

We started receiving information last year after Davieon Williams was stabbed to death at Elmore Correctional Facility that Elmore has a common practice of no officers manning the dormitories.

Shall we continue wondering why Elmore Correctional Facility is becoming known as Alabama’s most dangerous prison?

Recently, we learned through a separate source working at the facility that when Sanders was found unresponsive and allegedly beaten to death by four other inmates, “no officer” was in the dormitory. We also learned that the report initially given to the mainstream media that “correctional officials” found Sanders was fabricated.

Instead, inmates attempted to find the dorm officer for a long period of time without success after they took Sanders’s body to the front of the dorm, attempting to get him medical attention.

These claims that officers commonly abandon their posts were at one time hard to believe, until video started being leaked showing no officers in the dorms. The officers assigned to the dormitories were observed and recorded on video gathered outside, away from their assigned posts, for long periods, leaving the inmates in the dormitories unsupervised.

Shall we continue wondering why Elmore Correctional Facility is becoming known as Alabama’s most dangerous prison?

Contact Unheard Voices OTCJ, which works in partnership with the Free Alabama Movement, at https://unheardvoicesotcj.wordpress.com/ or on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/groups/343586319355814/.