Two more inmates at Lee Arrendale State Prison were booked by the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office this week on charges involving riots at the prison which has been embattled with controversies for nearly all of 2020.
Georgia Department of Corrections officials have shared few details about the latest incident, but Monique Sherina Fleming, 24, of Lawrenceville, Virginia, was arrested last week on two counts each of riot in a penal institution, obstructing or hindering law enforcement officers, and aggravated assault on officers.
This stemmed from another incident on July 15 and not the first one that took place April 17 and resulted in several arrests in September.
The July incident happened in the prison yard and involved Fleming allegedly assaulting several staff members. That is the extent of the details provided on an incident report give to The Northeast Georgian by McCall Trammell, assistant general counsel for the GDC, citing that the case is still under investigation.
Another inmate – Kitana Lee Watts, 24, of Alto – was arrested Tuesday on one count each of the same three charges. Trammell did not respond to an email requesting an incident report involving Watts, who was not listed on either of the reports from the other riots.
In the April riot, the incident report said it involved serious injury, but GDC officials did not specify who was hurt. The report said all seven guards used “hands-on” force, and it claims none of the inmates were injured, implying the “serious injury” involved a guard.
For Lee Arrendale Prison this year, that makes a minimum of three riots, four sexual assaults and two inmates accusing guards of physical abuse and brutality. The GDC has given nearly no comments on most of these incidents, citing investigations or privacy concerns, or just ignoring requests for comment completely.