CAPRON, Va. -- Rioting convicts took over a housing unit at Southampton Correctional Center in an hour-long rampage Thursday that injured eight employees, including an assistant warden.
The melee began in the dining hall about 7:10 a.m. and spread to the prison yard, Assistant Warden Robert Wootton said the convicts took over the building and also ransacked the prison's commissary.
Five employees -- including Wootton, who was hit in the head with a chair and required three stitches -- were treated and released at a hospital and three employees were treated for minor injuries at the prison.
No prisoners were reported injured.
Wootton said criminal indictments would be sought against the 20 to 30 inmates actively involved in the riot.
'We have identified some inmates we believe had leadership roles in the disturbance,' said Wootton, who speculated the disturbance was triggered by an investigation of an inmate extortion and drug ring.
'We were planning some actions against some (10 to 20) inmates that we suspected of illegal activities and some of those inmates acted on their suspicions and started the disturbance,' Wootton said.
'I am not sure what their object was other than to cause disruption, a kind of show of strength on their part,' he said.
The melee at the prison about 60 miles west of Norfolk was brought under control by by 8:10 p.m., Wootton said.
'We sent 40 or more officers into the institution with shields, batons and helmets, backed up by other officers ... and gathered the bulk of the inmates (about 200) who were loose on the yard onto the ball field and locked them off from the buildings,' Wootton said.
Virginia State Police were called to the scene, but were not needed.
Southampton is a medium-security prison housing 547 inmates, most of them first-time felons between the ages of 18 and 25.
The disturbance began in the dining hall when several fights broke out among the inmates, and Wootton, who was struck in the back of the head with a chair, tried to break them up.
'They were throwing mop buckets and trays, so a couple of inmates in the food-service area pulled me inside there and we locked that area down,' he said.
A lockdown was imposed after order was resorted and inmates will remain confined to their cells 'until such time that the warden determines that it can be lifted, officials said.
