A brawl at the La Victoria Jail resulted in the death of three people and ten injured on Sunday, 16 January 2022. The prison authorities identified the dead as Juan Nicolás Ovalles Ferrán (El Mello), 30; Pedro Luis Moreno Díaz, 31, and Rafael Batista (Rasputín), 35.
The Listin Diario reports the brawl is the latest case in a long list of incidents involving firearms in the hands of inmates in the country’s prisons.
According to a first report offered by the Attorney General Office, the incident occurred around 1am on Sunday when two groups of inmates clashed violently, causing the tragedy.
The authorities reported the deceased were in jail for firearms and drug trafficking crimes.
A jail community leader Juan Leger told a Hoy newspaper reporter: “The police chief should investigate who gave the key at 10pm to Cangrejo to kill those people. The culprits of these deaths are the bosses. Where did that prisoner get that gun? It was some big people from there,” said the community leader.
In spite of the different operations carried out by the authorities over the years to “take control” of the prisons, the uprisings of the inmates continue, leaving dozens of dead and wounded in their wake.
The La Victoria Jail has a population of around 7,200 inmates. The jail would have been shut down and inmates transferred to the Nueva Victoria Jail, in which the past authorities invested more than four billion pesos, but the new jail has not been opened due to major flaws in its construction. Former President Danilo Medina had inaugurated the Nueva Victoria Jail shortly before the end of his last term. Former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez is in jail accused of irregularities in office that also involve the construction of the Nueva Victoria Jail.
Read more in Spanish:
Attorney General Office
El Caribe
Hoy
Attorney General Office
Listin Diario
Hoy
17 January 2022