Federal prosecutors charged nine inmates at the troubled Metropolitan Detention Center in two killings and several assaults. One guard was charged in a shooting.
Federal authorities have charged nine inmates and a guard at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn with crimes including assault and murder, in an effort to clean up a deadly facility that has housed some of the city’s highest-profile defendants.
Those accused are said to have carried out attacks that include the killings of Uriel Whyte in June, who was stabbed in the carotid artery during an argument, and Edwin Cordero in July, who was beaten and stabbed as he tried to protect himself with a table.
Other charges include assaults in which a corrections officer was punched in the face after offering an inmate breakfast; another in which an inmate sitting with his feet up was stabbed 44 times by three gang members; and one in which an inmate was stabbed in the spine with a makeshift ice pick.
The charges depict a federal lockup where inmates wielded deadly force, largely unimpeded. The Brooklyn detention center, currently home to the musician and impresario Sean Combs and the cryptocurrency swindler Sam Bankman-Fried, has a long history of staffing problems, medical mistreatment and violence.
“Violence will not be tolerated in our federal jails,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a news release on Monday. “Let these charges serve as a warning to those who would engage in criminal conduct behind bars, and anyone else who facilitates those crimes: Your conduct will be exposed, and you will be held accountable.”
The U.S. attorney’s office said Mr. Whyte was killed on June 7 when two other inmates, Andrew Simpson, 26, and Devone Thomas, 24, attacked him after he and Mr. Simpson had an argument. Mr. Whyte was stabbed in the neck and escaped the cell to seek medical aid, but died despite efforts to save him, according to the prosecutor’s office. The whole attack lasted about 15 minutes, prosecutors said.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
