Woman says her nephew was stabbed at Hinds County jail, latest violence at the troubled facility
By Molly Minta | Originally published by Mississippi Today
A woman says her nephew was stabbed while in custody at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond, but Sheriff Tyree Jones isn’t confirming the attack.
Nicole Gibson said her nephew, 26-year-old Isaac Gibson, told her he was stabbed over 10 times in the back of the head and the neck between 3 and 5 a.m. on Thursday. He had been denied bond after he was charged with murder in the killing of 18-year-old Trevarius Cooper at a south Jackson apartment complex.
Nicole Gibson obtained what appears to be a cellphone video that she says shows the attack on her nephew, who she said had just been moved to a different cell block. The grainy footage reviewed by Mississippi Today shows several men in green-and-white uniforms beating another man as he flails on the floor. At one point, one of the inmates stabs the man with a silver object.
READ MORE: Hinds County’s new jail nears completion as incarceration costs climb
When Nicole Gibson called the jail for answers about the attack – which she believes also targeted one of the other people accused in the killing at Pine Ridge Gardens Apartments – she said no one would tell her what happened.
“They was really trying to be smart until I told the lady, ‘Listen, I know my nephew has been stabbed, and I’m trying to find out his condition,’” she said.
Staff then transferred Nicole Gibson to another phone line, she said, but no one answered. She turned to Mississippi Today, seeking help obtaining more information.
“I had left a voicemail screaming for urgency of the update of the condition of my nephew and then nobody ever called me,” she said.
When Sheriff Jones was reached for comment Thursday, about 12 hours after Nicole Gibson believes the attack occurred, he told Mississippi Today: “I haven’t heard anything about it.”
Jones said he would call the news outlet if he learned more. Jones hasn’t responded to a reporter’s repeated calls and text messages.
Nicole Gibson said she thinks the attack was in retaliation after the Jackson Police Department arrested Gibson and two others and charged all three with murder in Cooper’s killing. The shooting occurred March 18 at Pine Ridge Gardens, an apartment complex more commonly referred to by its former name, Rebelwood.
Gibson said she believes one of the other men charged in the killing at the apartment complex was also attacked in jail.
After repeatedly calling the jail, Nicole Gibson said she was finally able to speak with her nephew, who she said was in the jail’s medical bay. She said he told her he didn’t know what he was stabbed with.
“That’s why he wants me to try to get him a tetanus shot,” she said.
But without more communication with jail staff, she doesn’t trust that the jail is taking steps to protect her nephew from further danger or to provide him proper medical care.
The jail was taken over by a 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 conditions.
The U.S. Department of Justice had found Hinds County was running a jail with dangerous conditions and repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of people imprisoned at Raymond.
While the receiver, a former Baltimore jail warden named Wendell France, has “operational control” of the facility, he is barred from making public statements about his work.
The facility is located about a half hour outside of Jackson.
Six people died at the jail last year, including a homicide, a drug overdose and another suspected drug overdose, according to the Marshall Project.
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
