The problems at Maryland's troubled prisons in Jessup continued yesterday as authorities thwarted an attempted escape by an inmate serving a life sentence for attempted murder.
State prison officials said the inmate scaled an interior fence at the Maryland House of Correction Annex and was trying to get past razor wire and over another fence to the outside before he was ordered down by a correctional officer patrolling the prison perimeter.
"He was not being combative, he was compliant," said Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction.
The attempted escape was the latest in a series of incidents at state prisons in Jessup, where three inmates have been fatally stabbed since December and more than a half-dozen others have been seriously injured.
The most recent stabbing occurred Friday at the Maryland Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison, when two prisoners managed to get out of what were supposed to have been locked cells.
They assaulted an officer, took his keys and used them to gain access to another prisoner who was stabbed several times. The injured inmate was taken by ambulance to Maryland Shock Trauma Center for treatment of his injuries and returned to the prison, according to prison officials.
Doggett confirmed the details of the incident when she was questioned about accounts The Sun obtained from other correctional sources.
The two prisoners were in cells in the segregation housing unit, where inmates are kept apart from the general prison population for disciplinary or other reasons.
A correctional officer was escorting an inmate from the shower back to his cell Friday when the two men, who had jammed the latches on their cell door, emerged, Doggett said.
As the two inmates approached, she said, the officer pushed the prisoner he was escorting behind a metal gate that separates the shower area from the housing tier and secured it. He was not carrying a gun because officers in contact with inmates are not allowed to carry firearms, only pepper spray.
The inmates, who had homemade knives, wrestled the keys from the officer and managed to get to the other prisoner and stab him several times before more officers could arrive and intercede, Doggett said.
The officer who was escorting the inmate was taken to a local medical center for treatment of a sprained left shoulder and is on administrative leave while he recovers, she said.
