Three men. Two jails. One day. Were south Jackson shooting suspects targeted in coordinated attacks?
By Molly Minta | Originally published by Mississippi Today
Three men charged with the same shooting at a south Jackson apartment complex were attacked within 24 hours of each other at two different jails – an incident a corrections expert called “bizarre” and “alarming.”
Twin sisters Natalie and Nicole Gibson believe their children, Fredrick Williams and Isaac Gibson, were victims of a coordinated attack on April 23 – Gibson at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond and Williams at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in the Mississippi Delta, where Hinds County houses some detainees because the Raymond jail is crowded.
“This is today’s society,” Natalie Gibson said. “You have no friends.”
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones previously confirmed that Isaac Gibson and another man facing murder charges in a March shooting at Pine Ridge Gardens Apartments were stabbed inside his jail on April 23, with the attack on Isaac Gibson occurring in the early morning.
“It’s a jail,” Jones said. “People get attacked, people fight. In Hinds County, Madison County, Rankin County, Simpson County. All over the country, people fight in jails.”
In an effort to make her own peace with the incident, Natalie Gibson told Mississippi Today a similar sentiment: “Jail is jail, and kids hurt kids.”
READ MORE: Hinds detainees in Delta prison injured during attacks they say are gang connected
Mississippi Today obtained a video of a stabbing inside a jail, but Jones said it did not depict his facility. Instead, Natalie and Nicole Gibson say the video shows the stabbing of Fredrick Williams, who had been transported to Tallahatchie shortly after Isaac Gibson was attacked in the Hinds County jail.
The video shows several men wearing green uniforms and white undershirts attacking a man in a cell. The men beat on the victim, punching him, flinging him around and stabbing him with what appear to be cloth-covered weapons as he yells, “What I do?”
Since the attack, Natalie Gibson said she’s been able to talk to Williams. She said he told her he was attacked by the same group of men who stabbed Isaac Gibson in the Hinds County jail. She said Williams believes they traveled with him in the transport van to Tallahatchie.
Natalie Gibson also said Williams told her he was stabbed over a dozen times in his head and body, has broken bones in his face and can barely see out of his right eye. She said he told her that he felt threatened by a lieutenant who asked if he wanted to press charges.
Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the private company that runs the Tallahatchie prison, wrote in an email to Mississippi Today that an attack on two Hinds County inmates did occur in the jail at around 5:25 p.m. on April 23. He said one was treated at the jail and the other went to a local hospital.
But Gustin did not provide the inmates’ names or confirm that the video obtained by Mississippi Today depicts the facility in the Mississippi Delta. He wrote that the Tutwiler Police Department is handling the investigation, but the department could not be reached.
“As this is an active investigation, we cannot provide any information related to the videos you shared as part of your inquiry,” Gustin wrote. “What I can share is that inmates are not allowed to have cellphones and they are considered contraband.”
Were it not for the video, Natalie Gibson believes Williams would be dead. She said she was sitting at her kitchen table getting ready to eat dinner when her cousin called and told her to check Facebook. Someone was livestreaming the beating.
Immediately, Natalie Gibson said she tried to get ahold of someone at Tallahatchie. After about 20 minutes, she said she connected with a sergeant who initially told her “ain’t nothing happened down there.” She said he didn’t check on Williams until she played him the video.
She said Williams later told her that he had been lying on the ground, bleeding from the head, for a half hour before staff discovered him.
Jail violence is common, but this attack was unusual
Violence in Mississippi’s jails and prisons is far from unusual, said Kathryn Bryan, a corrections specialist who has run jails and prisons across the country and briefly oversaw the Raymond Detention Center.
In Tallahatchie, Williams is far from the only person who has been attacked this year. Last month, an inmate from the US Virgin Islands was stabbed to death in Tallahatchie, leading a senator from the territory to voice concerns about conditions at the private prison, Mississippi Today reported.
But Bryan called it “bizarre” and “alarming” for attacks to span two facilities, occur within a day of each other and involve multiple people facing the same charges.
“I have never heard of a scenario that extreme,” she said.
Bryan added it was highly unlikely the inmates responsible for the attack lacked help of some kind.
“It’s equally alarming: Staff are either at worst complicit,” she said. “Or second worst, either deliberately indifferent or negligent.”
Either way, Bryan said the Gibsons should file a lawsuit against the jails, noting a settlement would add to the financial toll Hinds County is already experiencing as it builds a new jail to replace Raymond.
“There’s money to be had and that may be the only thing that gets their attention,” she said,
Jones, the Hinds County sheriff, cited legal concerns as a reason he could no longer comment on the incident while speaking to a reporter after a law enforcement standards and training board meeting on May 14.
Going forward, Jones said he will only release information if an inmate dies or escapes.
Sisters believe their family is persecuted
Natalie Gibson no longer lives in Jackson, but she grew up in the city with her twin sister, Nicole. For a time, their mother lived at Pine Ridge Gardens, a south Jackson apartment complex better known by its former name, Rebelwood.
The sisters sometimes stayed there, too, during what they both recalled was a more peaceful time at the subsidized housing complex. In recent years, Rebelwood has become the site of repeated shootings, with residents complaining of a lack of security and frequently calling the police.
In 2020, Nicole Gibson’s son, Quindarius Gibson, was fatally shot at Rebelwood. Ever since, the sisters say they’ve received threats. Their house was shot up. Their brother’s house was shot up.
“After Quindarius got killed, it (was) just pretty much street beef,” Natalie Gibson said.
In March, an 18-year-old named Trevarius Cooper joined the long list of Jacksonians who’ve lost their lives at Rebelwood. Cooper’s father, Johnny Cooper, told Mississippi Today he wanted to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the apartment complex and was advised by his attorney not to speak to the media.
On April 8, the Jackson Police Department held a press conference announcing it had charged Natalie and Nicole Gibson’s children and another man, Quandarius Beasley, with Cooper’s killing. The police did not offer an explanation for the men’s alleged motive or describe the chain of events they believe led to Cooper’s death.
Shortly after their children’s arrests, Natalie and Nicole Gibson told Mississippi Today they started receiving threats again.
Booked into the Raymond jail and denied bond, their children also started getting threats, the sisters said. Natalie Gibson said Isaac Gibson called her to say some inmates had promised to stab him and he wanted to see refuge in Tallahatchie. The aunt said she advised him not to go into a cell if he didn’t feel safe.
Lack of safety spurs lack of trust
Isaac Gibson and Beasley were stabbed in the Raymond Detention Center around 2 a.m., Jones previously confirmed to Mississippi Today.
About three hours later, Williams got on a van to go to Tallahatchie, Natalie Gibson said. He was already on his way when she called Raymond in the early morning to check on him.
“They assured me that as long as he’s in the (Tallahatchie) facility that nothing else will happen to him,” she said.
But Williams later told her that several men he believed had attacked Isaac Gibson were sitting in the back of the van taunting him. Natalie Gibson said that Williams was familiar with the men, but that his attackers weren’t directly involved in the ongoing saga that Natalie Gibson believes is engulfing her family.
As Williams was recovering in the medical area, Natalie Gibson said he told her that a lieutenant came by to ask him if he wanted to press charges. When Williams said yes, the lieutenant warned Williams that he could be killed in the jail, a statement that Williams interpreted as a threat.
Natalie Gibson said a staff member assured her that Williams would not be moved out of the infirmary. But on May 17, she said she received a call that the lieutenant and a sergeant had forced Williams to leave by pepper-spraying him.
Now, she wants Williams to go back to Raymond.
“I don’t know who I can trust in Mississippi,” she said.
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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