Locked Down: Life inside Mississippi prison where inmates set each other on fire, gangs control power
Published 1:01 pm Monday, August 19, 2019
Jeffery Wilemon was so severely beaten at South Mississippi Correctional Institution that he had to be airlifted to Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. Mississippi Department of Corrections
Henry Armstead, pictured here with his daughter, was severely beaten and burned while incarcerated at South Mississippi Correctional Institution, according to an incident report. Now transferred to the hospital at the State Penitentiary at Parchman, he’s still on a feeding tube. Photo courtesy of Demetrius Armstead family
Russell Turner, editor of the weekly Greene County Herald newspaper, had been a champion of the 516-bed South Mississippi Correctional Institution. After touring the prison, he now calls it “a ticking time bomb.” Owen Hornstein/InvestigateTV
Demetrius Armstead said she didn’t learn that her son, Henry Armstrong, had been beaten and burned at South Mississippi Correctional Institution until six days later, when the prison chaplain told her to head to a Hattiesburg hospital. She found her son on life support. “Everything in the whole of my body just went to the gut of my stomach,” she said. “It just tore me up on the inside.” Owen Hornstein/InvestigateTV
Drone photo shows the campus of South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville. Tammie Mills & Jon Turnipseed/InvestigateTV
Back then, Herald editor Russell Turner said, many inmates were teenagers who had gotten into trouble and needed a second chance. When inmates were in the community tackling a project with a work crew, “it was common for folks to provide meals to the crew,” he said.
That mindset began to change around 2010 after corrections officials agreed to shut down a unit plagued by violence at Parchman and began sending some of the state’s worst criminals to SMCI.
In 2009, 26 inmates were charged with crimes inside the prison, two of them for assaulting correctional officers, according to Greene County Circuit Court records.
By 2018, that number had more than doubled to 55 inmates. Nine charges involved assaulting correctional officers; an additional 16 for aggravated assault.
One inmate was charged with murder last year, three with escape.
Among the escapes was convicted murderer Michael F. Wilson, who had beaten two people to death.
That incident touched Turner personally. Turner had stopped by his house during the day on July 5, 2018, to find Wilson, 47, covered in sweat, wearing camouflage and sitting on the front steps. Wilson said he needed a ride to the hospital because his wife was in labor.
Turner gave him a ride, albeit with a gun in reach, he said. “I certainly did not know he was an escaped inmate.”
The hospital story was a ruse. Soon after dropping Wilson off at the hospital, Turner said he learned that the man had escaped from prison. Turner said he was surprised there had been no news of the escape.
Two hours passed before the public was informed. Prison officials didn’t even know he had escaped, according to an investigative report by the attorney general’s office.
Even after SMCI officials discovered the escape, they failed to “effectively communicate with outside agencies,” including the county sheriff’s office, the attorney general’s report concluded.
Two days later, authorities captured Wilson on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The delay upset Turner.
