Two people were killed and another injured on Wednesday after a shootout between prison officers and FBI agents investigating their alleged involvement in a corruption scandal at a Florida jail.
The gunfight began when the agents arrived at the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee to serve arrest warrants on six prison guards suspected of supplying drugs and alcohol to female inmates in exchange for money or sex.
One agent was killed when a guard opened fire, said FBI spokesperson Jeff Westcott. A second person, a prison officer named as Ralph Hill by his lawyer, was also killed in the subsequent exchange. He had taken his private weapon to work with him, against prison rules, sources said.
Another prison employee, not part of the investigation, was caught in crossfire and taken to hospital. There was no word on her condition on Wednesday night.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons no inmates at the jail — which holds about 1 400 women and 200 men in two centres — were involved.
Investigators were on Wednesday night trying to piece together details of the early-morning raid, arranged after a grand jury issued an indictment on Tuesday against the six guards who were all on duty on Wednesday.
The arrest warrants claim that the prison officers had sexual contact with eight inmates over a two-year period from September 2003 in exchange for ”contraband”, including drugs and alcohol.
Other inmates, who threatened to expose the scandal, were allegedly silenced by the guards.
After the shootout, the five surviving officers were taken into custody and charged with conspiracy to violate federal law.
Each could face 20 years in prison, according to Gregory Miller, the US attorney for north Florida, who sought the indictment alleging ”conspiracy to commit bribery, witness tampering, mail fraud and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering”.
Westcott gave no other details of the FBI inquiry but said that the dead officer was a member of the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General. – Guardian Unlimited Â