Sheriff: Incident could've escalated
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on October 28, 2016 9:57 AM
Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce said Sunday night's disturbance at Neuse Correctional Institution could have escalated into a full-scale riot if law enforcement agencies had not made a show of force.
Pierce said SWAT teams -- with both lethal and non-lethal weaponry -- were used to make entry into the prison and get the situation under control.
Goldsboro Police Department had original jurisdiction at the scene, Pierce said, and the sheriff's office was called in between 5:30 and 6 p.m. after the disturbance began around 4:30 p.m.
Once on scene, Pierce decided to call in the Wayne County and Johnston County SWAT teams due to the number of prisoners at the site and the general mayhem of the scene.
"You have to realize also there was a fire going on inside the prison compound," he said.
"We were told a storage building was on fire, and it was obstructed where we couldn't see exactly what was burned, but we were told by prison officials once we got there that their pharmacy/infirmary area was burning as well as the outbuilding. The inmates had gained access to some of the drugs as well as recreation equipment including ball bats. So we knew there was a real potential danger of going in."
Pierce said the SWAT teams when they first entered the prison began separating the provocateurs of the incident from the general population.
"The prison people were telling us they felt like they had a very limited number of initiators -- people that initiated this thing -- and they started identifying them and at that point, we started forming a plan to go in and isolate those people and actually extract them first," Pierce said.
"During this whole process the fire department was trying to lob water over the fence from their ladder truck to extinguish the fire as much as they could."
Eventually, Pierce said, the SWAT teams helped the fire departments on scene -- Goldsboro Fire Department, Rosewood Fire Department and Belfast Fire Department -- enter the building while being protected by the officers to fight fires inside the building.
Firefighters allowed the fires to burn once they were inside the prison and saw nobody was inside the buildings that were burning. After the initial entry of the prison, SWAT teams changed to riot gear and non-lethal weaponry such as bean bag guns and stun shields.
"In my career, I don't remember this happening (before)," said Maj. Tom Effler with the sheriff's office.
Local law enforcement had to strategize on the fly, as no protocols were in place to follow, Pierce said.
"I'm sure the prison system has protocols, but there was nothing that had been pre-planned that we knew of," Pierce said.
To handle the situation, the sheriff's office worked alongside the Goldsboro Police Department and called in two additional patrol shifts, activated its airwatch unit and also an extraction team in addition to the SWAT teams and other law enforcement agencies that responded.
Pierce and Police Chief Mike West set up a unified command post to arrange an appropriate response.
"Once the troublemaker, so to speak -- the ones that were causing the initial problems -- were extracted, and we were able to get in and separate the ones in the compound and get them out to the yard, they actually had them lined up, and they didn't give any problems after that," Pierce said. "When we first got there they were very vocal, they were hollering and carrying on, but once they saw we had the situation under control and enough force there to handle it, they really calmed right down."
The disturbance resulted in at least two assaults, two fires being set at the prison and the evacuation of 500 inmates.
Windows were also broken and four dorms were damaged during the mayhem.
The two people who were known to be assaulted Sunday night were an inmate and a corrections officer. The inmate, Tristan Phillips, 25, is serving a one-year and one-month sentence for felony possession of a controlled substance, according to North Carolina Department of Public Safety records.
Police reports show Phillips was assaulted by three other inmates around 5:10 p.m. Sunday.
Paris Michael Collins, the 34-year-old officer who was assaulted, has worked with the DPS since 2010.
Collins was not assaulted by Phillips, and information has not been released on which inmate assaulted Collins.