Jail fire kills 8 N. Carolina inmates
Prisoners were trapped in county lockup

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAKERSVILLE, N.C., May 4 — Eight inmates died when they were trapped inside a North Carolina county jail by a fire, authorities said.
SEVERAL MORE inmates and two or three employees were injured at the Mitchell County jail, county officials said Friday night.
Mark Broadway, the public information officer for Mitchell County, said the fire was reported about 10:05 p.m. Friday, when 15 to 20 people were inside the jail.
The jailer who reported the fire said it had trapped about 15 inmates inside the jail, which is about 40 miles northeast of Asheville.
Firefighters said at least 10 inmates were injured. Identities of the dead and injured were not immediately released.
The fire started inside the jail and was extinguished by 11:30 p.m. with the help of firefighters from six counties in western North Carolina, Broadway said. Authorities said the cause of the fire was undetermined.

I read this earlier and was going to post it, but you beat me to it. This is so horrible. My heart goes out to those that died, the fear they must have felt, and to their families. I hope the jail has treated these families with some respect in all this.

It must have been a really horrible experience. I feel so bad about it.

Here's the names of the inmates who died...

Authorities identified the dead inmates as Edmond Banks, 46; Danny Johnson, 42; Jesse Davis, 27; Jeremiah Presnell, 20; Jason Boston, 27; Joey Grindstaff, 23; Tywain Neal, 28; and Mark Thomas, 20.

Presnell's widow, Glenda, is expecting the couple's third child in July. She said she last spoke with her husband earlier in the week.

``He said, 'I love you' and told me he was straightening his life out,'' she said. ``He said 'God has given me a different way to go.'''


The complete article is:
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=NATIONAL&SLUG=JAIL%2dFIRE

I am so saddened by this..but God must know what he was doing..even i we dont......I dont think I will rest easily until Stephen is home safe and sound!! :(

How sad to have a life ended in such a painful way. Not to mention that they were trapped and had no way to even fight for there life.

THIS IS VERY SAD, AND I FEEL FOR THE FAMILIES OF THOSE MEN. I HATE TO SOUND SELFISH BUT I THANK GOD IT WAS NOT THE PRISON WHERE RON IS

so sorry to hear this. My thoughts are with the prisoners who lost their lives and their families. I do hope the prison treated them with some respect indeed. I cannot imagine how much this must hurt!

I read about this in the Sunday Charlotte North Carolina Observer. This really upsets me because it was uncalled for. This jail is in the county where my mother grew up as a child and where many of my relatives are from. It is a very small town and the jail is outdated. It always amazes me how we put such little concern into the safety of human beings. Shouldn't we have laws that state our jails and prisons should be equipped with spinkler systems and fire alarms? I realize the newer facilities have these but the older ones should have to install these safety features to.




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This was so tragic. There are at least two counties in the state that I live in that have modern facilities with sprinklers and electronic locks, but I have been afraid for a long time that this was going to happen here. The electronic lock system in both of these county jails are broken and they have the individual cells PAD LOCKED at night after a certain time. If there was a fire there is NO way that they could ever get all the cells unlocked to let these people out. There is something like 300 inmates in the county that I live in and 250 in a neighboring county. It is so overcrowded that it is pathetic. There is something like four men sleeping in two man cells. On the floors in day rooms and some dont even have mattresses. It is pitiful. Pray for these men also. Thanks

this also scares me and to be honest, some of these things sound like things that only happen in non-Western countries...unfortunally this isn't so :(

http://www.courttv.com/news/2002/0506/prisonfire_ap.html

Prison fire raises safety questions