Households of two males who had been fatally stabbed inside a Florida jail are demanding solutions after months of thriller surrounding the circumstances of their family members’ deaths.
The households of Allec Garcia, 34, and Antron Griffin, 31, filed separate lawsuits on Monday in opposition to the GEO Group, which operates prisons throughout the U.S., together with the South Bay Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility the place the boys had been stabbed to dying in separate incidents.
The lawsuits accuse the GEO Group of negligence and failing to advertgown threats from different inmates, saying this led to the boys’s wrongful deaths.
Kimberly Wald, an lawyer representing the households, advised JHB in an interview that there are similarities between the 2 circumstances, although the boys died in separate cases.
In keeping with state data, Griffin was serving 4 years for aggravated battery, and Garcia was serving eight years for battery.
“They made some errors of their life, and so they had been doing what they wanted to to serve their sentence, however they didn’t should die,” Wald mentioned. “The GEO Group, they’ve been paid over $400 million for this contract to function this jail, and you need to maintain the inmates protected. They’re human beings.”
In a press release to JHB, the GEO Group mentioned it’s “dedicated to the protection, safety, and well-being of these entrusted to our care.”
“The information and circumstances surrounding these two incidents are at the moment beneath investigation,” the assertion learn. “GEO is totally cooperating with the suitable regulation enforcement officers who’re reviewing these circumstances.”
The Florida Division of Corrections didn’t instantly reply to JHB’s request for remark.
In keeping with its web site, the GEO Group operates about 50 safe services nationwide, together with a number of ICE immigrant detention facilities, with greater than 64,000 complete beds. The corporate’s inventory value has risen sharply since Donald Trump gained a second time period and mentioned mass deportations are coming. In an earnings name, founder and government chair George Zoley mentioned the corporate is dealing with a novel alternative.
Wald described each Garcia and Griffin as shut with their households and added that each males had advised their kinfolk that different inmates had been threatening them earlier than their deaths.
Griffin was fatally stabbed contained in the jail on March 11, whereas Garcia was killed 4 months in a while July 3, in keeping with Wald and the lawsuits.
Garcia’s mom mentioned she didn’t discover out about her son’s dying till two days after the actual fact, NBC affiliate WPTV reported.
“They known as me on the fifth and [said] he had died on the third,” she mentioned Tuesday, in keeping with the outlet. “I had no information that my son had been lifeless for nearly three days.”
Wald advised JHB that, not like in a typical murder investigation, authorities know that the boys’s killer or killers are nonetheless contained in the corrections facility.
“It’s a closed facility, and so we all know whoever did that is there, and the truth that now we’re right here six months later, and the household has been advised completely no info is totally baffling,” Wald mentioned.
In keeping with the lawsuits, inmate killings are nothing new at South Bay. The filings cite the circumstances of different individuals who have died within the jail, some in deadly stabbings.
Wald advised JHB that she believes underpaid or undertrained employees on the jail bear a few of the accountability, primarily based on her agency’s expertise in different lawsuits in opposition to correctional services.
“They need to have had higher coaching on see and acknowledge threats, of what to do if you see a prisoner being threatened, or do their rounds in a trend that may be extra environment friendly,” Wald mentioned.
She hopes any info that involves mild due to the lawsuits results in change on the jail.
“They had been sons, they had been brothers, they had been mates, and the aim of the justice system is for accountability and rehabilitation,” Wald mentioned. “They weren’t sentenced to dying, and that’s the punishment that they obtained, and that isn’t justice.”