AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

An al­ter­ca­tion be­tween prison of­fi­cers and in­mates at the Roy­al Gaol [Jail] on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, around 11 am to­day, has re­sult­ed in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 peo­ple hav­ing to seek med­ical treat­ment at the hos­pi­tal.

Se­nior prison of­fi­cials as­sured that with­in ten min­utes of the skir­mish erupt­ing, “the mat­ter was brought un­der con­trol”.

Re­ports in­di­cate that an of­fi­cer was es­cort­ing a high-risk pris­on­er back to his cell af­ter he re­ceived med­ical at­ten­tion, but that the pris­on­er al­leged­ly re­fused to fol­low in­struc­tions and be­gan en­gag­ing the of­fi­cer in a volatile man­ner.

It was re­port­ed that sev­er­al oth­er in­mates rushed to the pris­on­er’s aid, which led to a phys­i­cal fra­cas.

As an alarm was raised with­in the prison walls, oth­er of­fi­cers rushed to as­sist their col­league as they sought to quell the sit­u­a­tion.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, 11 peo­ple—in­clud­ing five prison of­fi­cers and six in­mates—were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) for med­ical at­ten­tion, where they were all treat­ed for mi­nor in­juries.

The PoS­GH ac­ti­vat­ed its emer­gency pro­ce­dures af­ter the in­jured peo­ple ar­rived, es­cort­ed by prison and po­lice of­fi­cers.