Georgia prison fight kills 3 inmates and injures over a dozen, including a guard

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ATLANTA (AP) — Fighting that broke out at a Georgia state prison over the weekend left three inmates dead and injured a corrections officer and 13 more inmates, the Georgia Department of Corrections said Monday.

The agency said the violence erupted in an outdoor area of the medium-security Washington State Prison, and that guards used non-lethal weapons to subdue the fighting. It said the situation was under control within about 90 minutes. Visitors were safely evacuated after some injured inmates entered the prison's visitation area, the statement said.

The agency said it believes the episode was “gang-affiliated” but gave few details about what happened, including how the three prisoners died. A Department of Corrections spokesperson did not immediately return phone, email and text messages seeking further information Monday.

Video posted to social media showed at least 20 inmates running along an outdoor walkway enclosed by security fencing. Some of the inmates appeared to be holding clubs or other makeshift weapons. The footage was posted by the Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia, which advocates for prisoner rights. The group said the footage came from an inmate.

The coalition posted another video showing fighting that it said was recorded Dec. 13 at Washington State Prison, which has a capacity of about 1,550 inmates and is located about 130 miles (210 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, according to the Department of Corrections website.

“It’s like they’re just letting them run around, do whatever,” said Michelle Lett, who told The Associated Press her nephew was among the inmates killed. “They weren’t trying to stop nothing. They were just running free in the prison.”

Lett said her nephew, 42-year-old Jimmy Lee Trammell, had been transferred to Washington State Prison recently ahead of his scheduled release Wednesday. She said a warden called Trammell's brother late Sunday to tell him that Trammell had been fatally stabbed in a fight. Unofficial word of his death had already reached the family from an inmate with a contraband cellphone, Lett said.

The Department of Corrections confirmed Trammell's death in its statement Monday, which said he was serving a 20-year sentence for burglary. Also killed were Ahmod Dewayne Hatcher, 23; and Teddy Dewayne Jackson, 27. The agency said both Hatcher and Jackson had been convicted of aggravated assault.

The violence was “predictable” considering Department of Corrections records indicate Washington State Prison has been badly understaffed, said Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, which advocates for better prisons with fewer inmates. She cited July figures showing that 72% of staff positions authorized for Washington State Prison were vacant.

“Unfortunately, we are in a state of normalized crisis,” Hollie said.

While fights break out at U.S. prisons daily, it’s rare to see violence that results in multiple deaths and so many people hurt, said Bryce Peterson, who studies corrections for the Center for Naval Analyses’ Center for Justice Research and Innovation.

“By any definition, this would fall under what we would call collective violence or a riot,” Peterson said. “This is certainly not a typical fight. This is much more serious.”

Peterson said that larger-scale prison violence typically has multiple causes, such as tension between inmate factions that erupts at an understaffed prison where guards struggle to contain the violence. He said the fact that people died at Washington State suggests some inmates had weapons.

“There’s usually protections in place that failed or broke down and led to this kind of incident,” Peterson said.

The fight came less than two years after a 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Justice said Georgia prison officials were “deliberately indifferent” to unchecked deadly violence, widespread drug use, extortion and sexual abuse at state lockups.

The report, which followed a civil rights investigation, found sophisticated gangs run prison black markets trafficking in drugs, weapons and electronic devices such as drones and smartphones. Investigators also cited a rising number of homicides in Georgia prisons, from seven in 2018 to 35 in 2023. Homicides later rose to 66 in 2024, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and were on pace to top in 2025 through June.

State officials denied they were violating inmates' constitutional rights at the time of the 2024 report, but Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver and others have acknowledged that the pandemic led to a staffing crisis in state prisons as many prison guards resigned. The state has pumped more than $600 million in new spending into the Department of Corrections in recent years. That has helped hire more guards, but the corrections chief told lawmakers in December that the state is still 1,000 guards short of recommended staffing levels.

State Rep. Bill Hitchens, a Republican from Rincon, said at the December hearing that he’s concerned the prison system isn’t making meaningful progress toward preventing inmates from jamming or disabling cell-door locks. Broken locks allow inmates to roam freely and commit attacks. Oliver said at the time that fully replacing cell-door locks could take years.

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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Washington and Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed.