New Mexico State Penitentiary Riot - Violence Ensues

Violence Ensues

By mid-morning events had spiraled out of control within the cellblocks. Murder and violence had erupted. Gangs were fighting gangs, and a group of rioters led by some of the most dangerous inmates (who by now had been released from solitary confinement) decided to break into cell block 4, which housed the protective-custody unit. This held the snitches and those labelled as informers. But it also housed inmates who were vulnerable, mentally ill or convicted of sex crimes. Initially, the plan was to take revenge on the snitches, but the violence soon became indiscriminate.

When the group reached cellblock 4, they found that they did not have keys to enter these cells. Unfortunately for the prisoners in protective custody, the rioters found blowtorches that had been brought into the prison as part of an ongoing construction project. They used these to cut through the bars over the next five hours. Locked in their cells, the segregated prisoners called to the State Police pleading for them to save them, but to no avail. Waiting officers decided to do nothing despite there being a back door to cellblock 4, which would have offered a way to free them.

Meanwhile the rioters began taunting prison officials over the radio about what they are going to do to the men in cell block 4. But no action is taken. One official is heard to remark about the men in the segregation facility, "it's their ass". As dawn broke, an 'execution squad' finally cut through the grille and entered the block. The security panel controlling the cell doors was burned off. Victims were pulled from their cells to be tortured, dismembered, decapitated, or burned alive.

During an edition of BBC's Timewatch program, an eyewitness described the carnage in cell block 4. They saw a inmate held up in front of a window, he was being tortured by using a blow torch on his face, they then started using the torch on his eyes, and then the inmate's head exploded.

Men were killed with piping, work tools and knives. One man was partially decapitated after being thrown over the second tier balcony with a noose around his neck. The corpse was then dragged down and hacked up. Fires had also begun raging unchecked throughout several parts of the prison.