Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones confirmed that two men were assaulted while in custody at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond. However, he said a cellphone video obtained by a family member and shared with Mississippi Today does not depict the attack inside the troubled jail.
Jones told Mississippi Today that 26-year-old Isaac Gibson and 22-year-old Quandarius Beasley were injured in the same housing unit in the early morning hours of April 23 and taken to the jail’s medical bay following a “detainee-on-detainee” attack.
The sheriff said the attack is under investigation, and the attackers have not been identified.
The sheriff would not confirm the nature of the men’s injuries, saying he can’t release medical information. He also would not provide more specifics about the exact events that led to the attack, though he said that Isaac Gibson was injured around 2 a.m.
Isaac Gibson’s aunt, Nicole Gibson, told Mississippi Today that her nephew was stabbed inside the jail. She believes the attack was in retaliation after the Jackson Police Department arrested Gibson, Beasley and one other man and charged all three with murder in the killing of an 18-year-old at a south Jackson apartment complex.
“I can’t confirm if the motive was the same as the other one,” Jones said of the two men’s injuries. “I’m not sure.”
Nicole Gibson said that jail staff would not respond to her calls asking if her nephew was stabbed. But the information she had received was disturbing: She was told that Beasley was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center due to the extent of his injuries.
If an inmate is in critical condition, Jones said families are notified based on who the inmate tells staff to call or the contact information listed in the jail file. But he wouldn’t confirm to Mississippi Today if Beasley was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center because he said that is private medical information.
“Do we notify the family of every incident that happens in the facility? Absolutely not,” he said.
Jones said he had been notified of the attack last week in an email containing what he called a “rapid notification” file from the court-appointed receiver who is running the jail, Wendell France.
When Mississippi Today reached the sheriff 12 hours after the attack, he told the news outlet he was not aware of the incident.
“I had not seen the rapid notification (when Mississippi Today called),” Jones told the news outlet this week. “It was in my email.”
Jones said the video that Nicole Gibson obtained was not filmed inside the Raymond facility. The 24-second clip reviewed by Mississippi Today depicts men in green uniforms and white undershirts beating on another inmate as he flailed on the floor.
While the video shows men wearing two-piece uniforms, Jones said inmates in Raymond wear jumpsuits.
When a family member hears concerning information about their relative, Jones said they can call or visit the facility to receive more information. In Nicole Gibson’s case, he speculated the jail staff may not have returned her voicemail about Isaac Gibson’s condition because she is not listed as his next-of-kin in his file.
Nicole Gibson told Mississippi Today that she is Isaac Gibson’s next-of-kin because his mother, her twin sister, is deceased.
The Raymond Detention Center was taken over by France, the court-appointed federal receiver last fall, nearly a decade after the county entered into an agreement, called a consent decree, in 2016 to improve its dangerous conditions.
While France, a former Baltimore jail warden, has “operational control” of the facility, he is barred from making public statements about his work.
