Private company owns Oklahoma prison where 4 inmates killed

The fighting occurred among inmates in three separate housing units.

“The entire stabbing incident happened over a couple of minutes”, Watkins said, adding that prisoners were all locked in their cells within 40 minutes of the outbreak of violence.

“This isn’t a private or public prison issue”. “No corrections system – public or private – is immune to disturbances”. The company operates three private facilities in Oklahoma housing almost 6,000 prisoners and dozens nationwide housing tens of thousands of inmates.

One of the treated inmates was later returned to the prison and the other three remained hospitalized in stable condition Sunday, said Steve Owen, a spokesman for Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, which owns and operates the prison.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is investigating the incident at the 1,720-bed medium- and maximum-security facility for men in Cushing, Oklahoma, about 60 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

The 40-minute disturbance at Cimarron Correctional Facility was “quelled” by staff around 4.40pm local time (11:40 BST). According to an internal DOC investigative report obtained by The Associated Press, 36-year-old Lewis Hamilton, a high-ranking gang member, was stabbed to death in August during an assault involving four other prisoners.

In June, 12 inmates were taken to the hospital from a riot involving hundreds at the prison.

The Cimarron Correctional Facility remains under lockdown while investigators look into the fatal altercation that lasted less than two minutes but killed four inmates. Because of this, weapons are sometimes smuggled into prison facilities from the outside.

(Cushing, Okla.) – Four inmates who died as a result of injuries sustained in a Saturday afternoon fight at the privately-owned Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing were identified this afternoon as Anthony Fulwilder, Michael Mayden, Kyle Tiffee and Christopher Tignor, by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. All four of the inmates had convictions out of Oklahoma County, where the state’s capital city, Oklahoma City, is located.