Prison officials failed to act despite hearing of escape plot – staffer
Jul 12, 2017 , http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....escape-plot-staffer/
Prison officials would have had some indication that a massive breakout at the Camp Street facility was in the making. This is according to some sources close to the investigation into the massive fire which razed the entire prison on Sunday.
Kaieteur News caught up with a few workers attached to the penitentiary yesterday, who noted that there had been rumours that the men were plotting a massive riot, for some time now. But despite the information, little to nothing was done to tighten up security at the prisons.
“Is long now we hearing that dem man de planning a riot, but nobody ain’t tek it for nothing. Because is prison and you does hear all kind of thing,” a staffer attached to the facility stated.
“Ever since the last fire, we hear dem men (the prisoners) was planning bigger to get away, but nobody took it seriously.”
According to the source, the prisons would undergo regular searches, but this was not enough to stop any serious escape plot.
“They would find things and just tek it away or warn them… nothing too serious does happen to the prisoners if they get ketch with certain things,” the staff noted.
It is this sort of non-action by prison officials, that the staffer believes encouraged the plot by several prisoners to escape the State Penitentiary.
On Sunday, Mark Royden Williams, who was serving time for the Bartica Massacre, and ex-cop and murder accused Uree Varswyck, Stafrei Hopkinson Alexander and an Amerindian partner, together escaped the jailhouse using handguns and other improvised weapons.
The men would have set fire to the facility and attacked and injured several prison officials before escaping.
Prison officer Jason Maltay, 20 who is in stable condition at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) detailed what transpired on the day the prison came under attack. Maltay said that he had reported for duty as normal that day at the Task Force Department of the Georgetown Prisons.
On Sunday afternoon, he heard a distress whistle. The whistle was to alert prison officers of a “threat”. I I don’t know who blew the whistle, but we responded,” Maltay recalled.
But by the tim he reached the inside the prison yard, several prisoners were already on the landing.
The officer noted that it was then he realized that the condemned prison building had been breached.
“Everything happened so quickly,” Maltay stated, while noting that he was shot by one of the escapees, Uree Varswyck, as he was making his way to the arms station for a firearm. When he fire the shot, I jump on the ground and stayed there. He run past me and went upstairs.”
It was then that Varswyck is said to have attacked another Prison Officer, Hubert Trim. Trim sustained a number of injuries, including chop wounds. He is still critical at the Georgetown Public Hospital. Trim’s relatives have since reported that he is in and out of consciousness. A Chief Prison Officer, Trim has undergone hours of surgery.
“He get chop bad and he went into surgery a number of times before,” one relative said.
Trim is among five other Prison officials undergoing treatment at the GPHC. Prison Officers Simeon Sandy, Errol Daphness, Drexel Gonsalves, and Dominic Mingo received treatment for either gunshot or chop wounds, or a combination of both.
