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One inmate killed and five others hospitalized after clash between white and black federal prisoners
One person was killed and five others were hospitalized in a violent clash between black and white incarcerated individuals on Sunday at the nation’s largest federal prison complex.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons identified the incarcerated individual who was killed as Troi Venable, 39, who was serving a 17-year term at the Florida penitentiary for assault and gun possession by a felon.
Federal authorities did not characterize the nature of Sunday's melee. But Joe Rojas, local chief of the prison workers union, described it as a long-simmering battle between black and white incarcerated individuals.
Rojas said Venable was killed with a homemade knife.
In a statement, prison officials said the altercation involving "multiple incarcerated individuals" broke out about 11:45 a.m., at the United States Penitentiary at Coleman, Florida. The facility is part of a cluster of federal prisons west of Orlando.
An undisclosed number of incarcerated individuals were treated for minor injuries at the prison, while Venable and five others were transported to local hospitals.
Venable, who had been implicated in a prior violent assault against a fellow prisoner while housed at the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania federal prison in 2014, was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
In the 2014 incident, prosecutors charged Venable and two other prisoners with seriously injuring another incarcerated individual using "improvised weapons."
