A group of inmates, possibly having jammed the locks on their cell doors, allegedly stabbed a corrections officer to death late Tuesday night at a Jessup prison although it was on lockdown, officials said.
Officer David McGuinn, 42, was counting down inmates by himself in the west wing of the Maryland House of Correction at about 10 p.m. when he was jumped by at least three inmates and stabbed in the neck and torso, officials said.
“It?s an old facility with old locking devices,” Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Sizer said at a press conference in Jessup. “If it calls for replacing [the] locks, we will.”
McGuinn was wearing a protective stab vest at the time, officials said. He was taken to the Baltimore Washington Medical Center and died about an hour later.
McGuinn is the second corrections officer killed in the line of duty this year. The last such fatality of an officer in a Maryland prison was more than 20 years ago.
Investigators are looking into the possibility that each of at least three cell locks was jammed by suspects before the attack, Sizer said.
Union officials said they took several calls from Jessup officers scared to return to work Wednesday, amid concerns that the prisons are so severely understaffed and security is so inadequate that they?ve become lethally dangerous places for guards and inmates.
“I?m extremely worried,” said Ron Bailey, executive director of the officers? union, calling the Jessup facility antiquated. “Every locksmith from around the country should be in there if necessary.”
The cell locks date to 1928 and are operated manually, an official said. Sizer said there are 47 officer vacancies, but the area where McGuinn worked was adequately staffed. Inmates in that area were confined to their cells after authorities canceled a picnic Saturday, acting on a tip that inmates were plotting against the officers, he said.
State police were investigating the stabbing Wednesday and interviewing the suspects, officials said.
Crowded conditions in an aging building that?s structurally difficult to monitor, along with limited distractions for inmates, are creating an explosive tension at Jessup and other prisons, an activist with a local prisoner rights group said.
“You?ve given them a lot of idle time to have nothing else to do but build up aggression,” said Hassan Giordano, of the Baltimore-based group Justice Maryland.
