RTWed, 01 Feb 2017 20:59 UTC
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Rep. William Carson, a member of the Delaware House Corrections Committee, said he had been told it was an "apparent hostage situation."
"The inmates have taken over a building," he told the
Delaware News Journal. Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jayme Gravell told the News Journal that state police and DOC response teams were called in to deal with the hostage situation.
This is an isolated incident and there is no threat to the public, Gravell said, noting that a statewide lockdown was DOC policy.
Named after a notable state senator, the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center is located outside of Smyrna, a town of some 10,000 residents in central Delaware.
Known as the JTVCC, the prison houses some 2,500 inmates in minimum, medium and maximum security sections. It is also serves as the pretrial detention center for Kent County.
The last major incident of this kind at the prison was in July 2004, the
News Journal reported. Convicted serial rapist Scott A. Miller had somehow passed through two security checkpoints before using a homemade knife to take hostage a prison counselor, and sexually assaulted her during a seven-hour ordeal. That standoff ended when a corrections officer shot and killed Miller.
Comment: A male corrections officer died and his female colleague was injured in a daylong standoff at a maximum security prison in Delaware. In phone calls to the media inmates said they
rebelled because of President Donald Trump and "everything he did."
No official demands were communicated to the police, but the inmates placed two phone calls to the Wilmington News Journal. In the second call, they brought up President Donald Trump and "all the things that he's doing now."
"We're trying to explain the reasons is for doing what we're doing. Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he's doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse," the inmates relayed to the Delaware News Journal on Wednesday evening, through a woman whose son was being held hostage.
They also demanded "education first and foremost," more rehabilitation programs, and "money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget."
The hashtag #VaughnRebellion began trending on Twitter.
On Thursday morning, the authorities stormed the building, freeing the hostages and reestablishing control. One of the hostages, a male corrections officer, was found dead. A female guard was hospitalized.
Obviously alternative news sites are not available to the inmates. Shows how convincing mainstream media can be with people that are captive listeners with nothing else to do.