5 Black Prisoners Suspiciously Killed In Mississippi State Prisons Within A Week…

Parchman, MS — Terrandance Dobbins, Walter Gates, Gregory Emary, Roosevelt Holliman, and Denorris Howell – who were all Black men – have been killed in pris­ons across the Mississippi state. Activists say the sus­pi­cious deaths are caused by neg­li­gence and mal­prac­tices in the state’s prison system.

In the past week, sev­er­al videos and pic­tures of deplorable con­di­tions and scenes includ­ing fires and vio­lence inside the pris­ons alleged­ly record­ed by dif­fer­ent inmates have sur­faced on the Internet.

Until Freedom, an orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for prison reform, and Yandy Smith, a busi­ness­woman, and real­i­ty TV star, shared the videos on their social media and has since gar­nered thou­sands of views and comments.

The Mississipi Department of Correction addressed the inci­dents in a state­ment last Friday.

Four inmates have died and sev­er­al have been injured at two state pris­ons and one region­al dur­ing major dis­tur­bances since Sunday,” the state­ment read. “One death occurred at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, (SMCI) in Leakesville, two at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP) at Parchman, and one at the Chickasaw County Regional Correctional Facility (CCRF) in Houston, Miss. MDOC inves­ti­ga­tors have deter­mined a fifth death and a minor fire, both at MSP, are unre­lat­ed to the major disturbances.”

State offi­cials and author­i­ties claim that an alleged drug war has caused the chaos and the death of some prisoners.

However, the pris­on­ers and activists claim that the prison guards did not real­ly pro­tect them from the vio­lence and that the con­di­tions inside the pris­ons are unac­cept­able even before.

In fact, an inspec­tion con­duct­ed by the Mississippi State Department of Health last year found that the MSP is still in a haz­ardous con­di­tion that repeat­ed­ly caused deaths to a num­ber of inmates in the prison, despite numer­ous com­plaints and law­suits over the years.

Moreover, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant said that the inmates are the rea­son for the vio­lence and the poor con­di­tion of the prison.

The inmates are the ones that take each other’s lives, the inmates are the ones that fash­ion weapons out of met­al. The inmates are the ones that do the dam­age to the very rooms they are liv­ing in,” Bryant told reporters in a video shared on Instagram by Until Freedom.