Eight Georgia prisons are on lockdown after a bloody June that included the killing of an inmate in one prison that prompted murder charges against a guard and three gang members, and a brawl at another facility that sent 16 inmates to hospitals, authorities said Wednesday.
The lockdowns are a response to rising tensions between prison gangs following the violence, the Georgia Department of Corrections said in a statement.
On June 11, inmate Joshua Brooks was found unresponsive in his cell at Calhoun State Prison in southwest Georgia. An autopsy later found that he’d died of blunt force trauma, leading to murder charges against a correctional officer, Shakera Burns, and three inmates, prisons spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said in a statement. She described the three prisoners as gang members.
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