ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608120068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BURKEVILLE
SOURCE: Associated Press
Guards stormed a medical unit Saturday at the Nottoway Correctional Center to free a guard and two nurses held hostage for seven hours by inmates who botched an escape attempt.
Eight guards suffered minor birdshot wounds when a weapon misfired during the dawn assault at the medium-security prison. The hostages and inmates were unharmed, state officials said.
About 30 guards firing stun guns rushed into the unit at 5:30 a.m. after all-night negotiations failed.
``This appears to be an isolated situation of inmates wanting to plan some escape or something of that nature, and it failed; and they in a split second decided to take hostages,'' Secretary of Public Safety Jerry Kilgore said.
The department gave this account:
About 10 p.m. Friday, a guard was jumped by three of the four inmates involved as they went inside from the recreation yard. They tied him up and took his uniform, which one inmate put on and tried to escape.
That inmate, Antoine Wicker, was captured within the prison but the other three prisoners retreated to the medical unit, where they took another guard and two female nurses hostage. The hostages were not identified.
At least one inmate had a homemade knife, Department of Corrections spokesman David Botkins said.
The inmates asked to speak to the press and an attorney. The requests were denied, but the prisoners talked with a communications team through the night, he said.
Kilgore said the three inmates holding the hostages were William Thorpe, Terrence Domio and Sherrion Sherman.
Thorpe, 28, is serving 51 years for robbery, assault and kidnapping in Petersburg. He tried to escape from prison in 1989, Botkins said.
Domio, 32, is serving multiple life terms plus 80 years for rape, sexual assault, robbery and statutory burglary in Norfolk. Sherman, 25, is serving 13 years for robbery and use of a firearm in a felony in Newport News.
Wicker, 24, is serving 41 years and nine months for armed robbery in Norfolk.
All four were taken to maximum-security prisons, Kilgore said. They face kidnapping counts and other charges.
The Nottoway prison is now under an indefinite lockdown, which means inmates will be in their cells for all but a few hours a day.
Kilgore said other inmates tried to block guards as they rushed to help the officer who was jumped.
``We have no indication that the guard was violating any policies or procedures. The officer was doing his job,'' Kilgore said. ``In medium-security facilities, officers do have more contact with the inmates.''
The Nottoway prison, in rural Southside Virginia, was built in 1984 to handle 768 inmates. It now has 1,149 inmates because they are placed two to a cell. Kilgore said he did not think prison crowding led to the incident.
It was the second uprising at the prison this summer. On July 6, officers and inmates got into a melee when prisoners refused to leave a recreation yard. No one was seriously hurt, Botkins said.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB