In This Together CT

http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/03/30/crime_and_courts/doc4bb218d23cb99535210459.txt

By Laura F. Alix
Journal Inquirer
Published: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 11:29 AM EDT

SOMERS — Five staff members at Connecticut’s maximum-security prison were assaulted and the facility was placed on lockdown Monday morning when a Death Row inmate punched a captain in the head and assaulted the staff members who responded to assist, officials said.

State Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett said the lockdown remained in effect today for the unit where the assault occurred but has been lifted for other areas of the prison.

According to Garnett, the assault happened around 10:30 a.m. at Northern Correctional Institution when a Death Row inmate assaulted a correctional captain.

Garnett would not identify the Death Row inmate, but state Rep. Karen Jarmoc, D-Enfield, has identified the inmate as Daniel Webb, 47, who is awaiting execution in the 1989 kidnapping and murder of Hartford bank vice president Diane Gellenbeck.

Garnett said the inmate was talking on the phone in the dayroom just prior to punching the captain in the head twice. Four staff members also suffered injuries to their shoulders, backs, and hand, when they responded to subdue the inmate, he said.

The staff members were taken to an outside medical facility for assessment and treatment. They have since been treated and released, Garnett said.

He said state police were summoned to the facility, and department officials will pursue criminal charges against the inmate.

The Associated Press reported that staff later found the inmate had concealed a spray bottle containing urine, feces, and hot sauce in his jumpsuit, but Garnett would not confirm or deny that, citing an ongoing criminal investigation.

Jarmoc said Monday that she had learned the assailant was Webb, and both she and Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, expressed concerns about sufficient consequences for inmates who assault staff.

“A person sitting on Death Row, what can you actually do to that inmate?” Kissel asked. “Should they have television? Should they have any kind of privileges at all?”

Kissel said it was likely the inmate’s privileges would be revoked for months, or possibly years, as a result of the assault.

Jarmoc added, “One of the areas I feel we can be doing a better job as a legislature is in making sure there are stronger consequences for when inmates attack staff. In this particular case, you’re talking about someone who already has a sentence of death row. How much more can you add on?”

Garnett said that in the past, death row inmates who have been uncooperative or assaultive may be put into administrative segregation.

“When you are put in administrative segregation, you basically have all your property taken from you,” such as books or television sets, he explained.

He added that death row inmates are not housed among the regular inmate population and are confined to a separate housing section.

“I think this underlines the dangerous job that correction officers have,” Kissel said, voicing uneasiness with staffing levels. “I constantly tell my colleagues in the legislature that we have to have adequate staffing in our facilities.”

Matt O’Connor, communications director for Local 2001 of the Connecticut State Employees Association-Service Employees International Union, echoed those concerns.

“The reality is that our members have been warning about the negative impact of ongoing short staffing among the supervisory ranks,” such as lieutenants, captains, and training officers, he said. “There has been an historic shortage of these posts filled, but it’s been particularly low in recent years, made worse by last year’s retirement incentive.”

Meanwhile, Jarmoc expressed concern about what she said was the attack’s sudden nature.

“This was unprompted, what they call a Pearl Harbor attack, on a captain,” she said. “There was no prompting. Sometimes, there are two inmates fighting, and an officer intervenes. This was out of the blue, unprompted.”

Webb was sentenced in 1991 for kidnapping and murdering Gellenbeck, a Connecticut National Bank executive in Hartford.

In August 1989, Gellenbeck was kidnapped from a parking garage on her lunch break and found shot to death a short time later in Keney Park in Hartford.

At the time of his arrest for Gellenbeck’s murder, Webb was free on bonds totaling more than $260,000 for unrelated kidnapping and sexual assault charges.

Webb was convicted in 1984 on charges that he abducted a woman from the Hartford Civic Center parking garage, took her to Keney Park, and raped her.

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