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News in Brief

PA: On April 6, 1996, four prisoners in the Adams county prison used tools and a weighted sock to attack two guards and escape from the minimum security prison. Police said the escapees may have been picked up by an accomplice in a car. The prisoners took off their jump suits and fled in their underwear.

WA: On April 10, 1996, Alvin Jordan committed suicide at the Washington State Penitentiary by slashing his wrists and bleeding to death. Jordan was serving a 31 year sentence for stabbing his girlfriend to death. He was discovered dead in the prison hospital 30 minutes after a guard claimed to have last checked on him.

WV: Sgt. Gary Lambert and Steve Rickman, jail guards at the Cabell County jail, were fired after a March 24, 1996, incident in which they staged a mock hanging of black prisoner Kenneth Ziegler. Police accused the two guards of placing a hangman's noose around Ziegler's neck, tying it to a pole and handcuffing his hands behind his back. The guards said they were "just joking" and that the hanging was not racially motivated.

OH: On April 1, 1996, Robert Willison escaped from his cell in the Lebanon Correctional Facility by sawing through a steel bar in his window. Willison was captured on prison grounds shortly thereafter. In June, 1995, two other prisoners successfully escaped from the prison by sawing through the bars in their cell windows.

Libya: A prison riot in the town of al-Kuwaifiya killed 16 guards and freed at least 400 prisoners, most of them antigovernment soldiers, according to travelers from Libya. The Libyan army was searching for the escapees, many of whom were believed to be hiding in nearby mountains.

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