USP Hazelton
The alarm at United States Penitentiary, Hazelton, interrupted Dr. Aaron Thornton mid-sentence. The eight inmates attending anger management therapy immediately assumed a prone position on the floor with their fingers interlaced behind their heads, as required during emergencies. Thornton retreated behind a gray metal desk, and the only guard in the room readied his baton in case anyone tried to take advantage of the situation. America’s most dangerous federal prison was in lockdown.
There were three long blasts of the electric siren, followed by a pause, and then three more bursts. The sound made the walls and floor vibrate. A strobe flashed red above the only door and bathed the dim cinderblock room in an eerie glow. Thornton rubbed his arms as a cold draft pierced the barred second-story window clouded with dirt and streaked with bird shit. He eyed the riflemen standing on a catwalk in the distance, atop the fortified, concrete watchtower.
The alarm signaled immediate danger somewhere in the prison—home to 1,300 violent inmates and nicknamed “Misery Mountain.” It would continue blaring until every prisoner was back in his cell.
It was never completely safe though. The local chapter of the Federation of Government Employees had long complained about an inadequate number of correctional officers, or COs, at the complex, which had a murder rate far higher than most federal prisons. The staffing shortage was so bad, officials relied on forced overtime and a policy of “augmentation,” which drafted the prison’s teachers, healthcare staff, plumbers, and cooks to serve double duty and compensate for the lack of guards. But jobs were scarce in the surrounding area of Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, and the area’s coal mines were not much safer.
John Grace, the guard in the room, was hired by Thornton two months earlier to administer standardized tests. The young, single dad needed extra money to pay for his twin boys’ daycare, so Thornton approved his request to work extra shifts as an augmentee guard.
Thornton, the prison’s last remaining psychologist, listened impatiently to the calm female voice with a gravelly Appalachian accent as it crackled over the guard’s radio. She methodically directed the orderly return of inmates to their cell blocks. The process took time—inmates outnumbered guards nine to one, and it was unwise to have too many people in the corridors and hallways at once.
The smell of Folgers wafted in from a break room down the hall and mixed with the scent of body odor. The psychologist wished he had stopped for coffee.
“Officer Grace, Control.”
The guard on the other side of the room raised his radio and pressed the side button. “Control, Officer Grace.”
“Officer Grace, you are clear to return to Section 4.”
Thornton was pleasantly surprised to hear the wait would end quickly. Lockdowns tended to agitate inmates, who welcomed any interruption to the monotony of prison life. The eight men in therapy that morning were unapologetic killers serving life sentences. They had nothing to lose and would happily exploit a disturbance if given the chance.
“Control, Officer Grace. Proceeding to Section 4 with eight inmates.” The guard holstered his radio, extended a set of keys from his belt, and unlocked the door. He swung it inward and instructed the prisoners to line up in the hallway.
Thornton called to the group. “We’ll try again next week. In the meantime, make a mental list of those trigger words and actions I talked about.”
Each of the prisoners acknowledged Thornton’s reminder. The psychologist had made several improvements to daily life at the prison and was well-liked.
The first six inmates exited the meeting room, but the last two—a white supremacist and a rival gang leader—paused several feet from the door. One of them muttered something to the other, and a scuffle ensued. Officer Grace tried to intervene but was knocked to the floor. A metal chair in his path slid across the room, its legs screeching uncomfortably on the bare tile. Fearing a brawl, the guard winced but managed to kick the self-locking door shut. That left the first six inmates confined in a hallway monitored by CCTV. Next, he pressed the emergency button on his radio to summon backup. Officer Grace tried to rise but could not—the fall aggravated an old knee injury.
The scuffle escalated into an all-out fight. The white supremacist, who had a significant weight advantage, held his opponent in a chokehold and swore to kill him. The rival gang leader made desperate rasping sounds as he punched his assailant's rib cage and kidneys. The red strobe and siren continued their rhythmic warnings. In the hallway outside, the six isolated inmates strained to watch the fight through a small window and banged heavily on the door, shouting encouragement.
“Doc, use this.” Officer Grace forcefully slid his baton across the floor.
Thornton reluctantly picked up the metal truncheon and looked across the desk at the inmates ten feet away. The white supremacist maintained a firm grip on his red-faced nemesis, who desperately pummeled his torso with no effect.
“Doc, he’s killing him! Knock him out!”
Thornton froze. As a child, he left a friend severely disabled after striking him on the head accidentally with a golf club. Even under the current circumstances, he could not bring himself to crack a man’s skull intentionally.
“Doc, do something!”
Another thirty seconds passed. Then the rival gang leader slumped, his eyes bulging grotesquely. His head thumped loudly on the floor as the Emergency Response Team, or ERT, answered Officer Grace’s distress call and began to clear the hallway for entry into the room.
The white supremacist—coursing with adrenaline and the rage of a caged animal—turned to the injured guard.
“Doc! Please! Stop him!”
The white supremacist picked up the nearby metal chair and raised it over his head. Officer Grace used one arm to maneuver awkwardly on the ground and the other to shield his head. It was no use. The inmate struck again and again until the officer was dead.
Thornton watched panic-stricken from behind the desk.
The ERT burst through the door and tackled the white supremacist just as he turned toward the psychologist.
