A wild fatal prison fight has broken out at one of the federal penitentiaries, and you will be totally shocked at the reason for it.
It was on Monday, January 31st at about approximately 11:30 a.m. that multiple inmates were involved in a riot at the United States Penitentiary located in Beaumont, Texas.
The prison staff immediately secured the area and soon discovered that inmate Guillermo Riojas and inmate Andrew Pineda were horribly injured due to the altercation. They were transported to a local hospital for life-threatening injuries where they would eventually die. There were some additional inmates that had been transported to a Beaumont-area hospital for further medical treatment and assessment.
The guards notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation and no staff or other inmates were injured during the altercation, however it did lead to a nationwide shutdown of all federal penitentiaries.
Mr. Riojas was 54 years old and he was sentenced in the Eastern District of California to a 38-year prison term because he committed the crime of Carjacking and Interference with State Commerce. Riojas had been in custody at USP Beaumont since May 2013.
Mr. Pineda was 34 years old and he had been sentenced in the Central District of California to a 6.5-year bid for the crime of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Conspiracy. Mr. Pineda had begun his bid at USP Beaumont on February 16, 2021.
USP Beaumont is known as a high-security facility that currently houses a prison population consisting of 1,372 male offenders.
Officials were deeply concerned that the deadly fight would spark off a chain reaction throughout the nation because both of these men were members of the Salvadoran street gang MS-13. They were afraid that other facilities would be negatively affected, according to a person that briefed the press on the bureau’s decision. They spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Officials proceeded to lock down all of the federal prisons on that following Monday afternoon, meaning that most of the inmates in these federal facilities were confined to their cells.
This was an unusually severe response by the bureau, to say the least. This indicates that they believed that the fight was unique in its potential to create a ripple effect and that they believed the violence was also in keeping with many of the troubles that have long plagued the Bureau of Prisons.
In truth, we are only just barely two months into the new year, and the Bureau of Prisons has already announced four different inmate deaths and three escapes. These penitentiaries continue to struggle with staff shortages, health issues related to COVID-19, mismanagement, violence, and several instances of employee misconduct.
Last January, Michael Carvajal, who was appointed to run the Bureau of Prisons in February 2020, announced that he was planning on resigning. Mr. Carvajal said that he would stay on until a successor had been found.
The Associated Press reported that this wasn’t the only instance of a wild fatal prison fight. When you couple that with the fact that over a hundred employees at the Bureau of Prisons had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for crimes in the last three years, it would appear that Carvajal had no choice to resign. Although Senator Richard J. Durbin is no choir boy himself, he too was calling for Carvajal to quit.