By Fox News US
Four Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) employees were being held hostage at a maximum-security prison Wednesday evening as inmates remained locked in an hours-long standoff with authorities.
Delaware State Police spokesman Richard Bratz told an evening news conference that five DOC employees were originally taken hostage at around 10:30 a.m.
Wednesday, but one captive was released approximately four hours later. The unidentified hostage was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries.
(Group of inmates took guards hostage at a maximum-security prison in Smyrna, DE, courtesy of Fox News and YouTube)
Bruce Rogers, counsel for the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware, told the Associated Press that the hostages included four guards and a prison counselor.
Bratz did not specify the occupation of the released hostage.
The News Journal newspaper reported that it had received a call from a woman who claimed her fiance was an inmate and was being held hostage at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna.
A man was patched onto the line and claimed that he had been asked to relay demands by the hostage takers.
The paper reported that the hostage takers’ demands as related by the inmate “made little sense, but gave the impression of a manifesto or decree.”
Bratz, the Delaware State Police spokesman, would not say whether authorities had received any demands from inside the prison.
Rogers told the AP that inmates had taken control of one building and added that officers and inmates had been injured. However, Bratz said he had no information on injuries apart from those suffered by the released hostage.
Bratz said the incident began when an officer in the prison’s “C building” radioed for help. The spokesman added that the building in question housed more than 100 inmates.
Video from above the prison showed uniformed officers gathered in two groups along fences near an entrance to the prison.
Later, video showed several people surrounding a stretcher and running as they pushed it across the compound. It wasn’t clear if a person was on the stretcher. People could be seen standing near a set of doors with an empty stretcher and wheelchair.
Gravell said firefighters were called to the scene after reports of smoke and were being held on standby.
According to the department’s website, the prison is Delaware’s largest correctional facility for men, housing about 2,500 inmates. It houses minimum, medium, and maximum security inmates, and also houses Kent County detainees awaiting trial.
It is also the site of the state’s death row and where executions were carried out. The prison opened in 1971.
In 2004, an inmate raped a counselor and took her hostage for nearly seven hours at the Smyrna prison, according to an Associated Press report at the time.
A department sharpshooter later shot and killed 45-year-old Scott Miller, according to the report, ending the standoff.
Fox News’ Tamara Gitt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Original post http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/01/delaware-prisons-on-lockdown-over-hostage-situation-officials-say.html
