A Hawaii prisoner who was injured in an attack by other inmates in his cell in an Arizona prison late last month suffered some 50 stab wounds to his head and upper body including wounds to both of his eyes, according to his sister.
Daniel Kosi, 51, was in his cell in a tightly controlled administrative segregation unit of the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, when he was assaulted on July 27.
His family is now questioning how the attack could possibly have happened.
That section of the prison is generally used as a disciplinary unit for inmates who violate prison rules, and Honolulu lawyer Myles Breiner said Hawaii officials are investigating whether a member of the Saguaro staff may have assisted Kosi’s attackers.
Authorities are investigating whether staff at the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona may have helped a group of inmates attack Hawaii prisoner Daniel Kosi. (Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2016)
The Hawaii Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released a statement last week that reported an unidentified Hawaii inmate allegedly assaulted a Saguaro correctional officer, took his keys and unlocked the cells of three other inmates.
Three of those inmates then allegedly opened the cell of another Hawaii inmate and assaulted him while a fourth served as a lookout. “Additional correctional officers immediately responded and stopped the assault,” according to the department’s statement.
Hawaii prisoner Daniel Kosi (Hawaii Corrections Department photo)
Daniel Kosi’s sister Rhonda confirmed her brother was the prisoner who was injured in the attack. She spoke to him after he returned from the hospital and was placed in the prison medical unit, and he told her he was cut or stabbed more than 50 times in the head, face, eyes, ears and shoulders.
“He said, ‘I should be dead, sis. God was in that cell with me,’” Rhonda Kosi said.
She questioned how her brother’s attackers could possibly have had enough time in such a high security setting to jump a guard, release three other inmates from three different cells and then open a fourth cell to attack her brother.
“It’s all time consuming. This is supposedly a heavily guarded facility,” she said. “There’s ACO’s everywhere. All the control rooms are right there, they’re right through the glass, you can see everything.”
Breiner, who represents another inmate who witnessed the attack, said the prison has a “strict policy” that two corrections officers accompany each prisoner who leaves his cell in administrative segregation, and all inmates are to be shackled when they exit their cells.
Surveillance video shows that did not happen in this case, he said, raising questions about the actions of the officer who was assaulted.
“There is a separate investigation going on into whether or not this guard was paid off,” Breiner said.
He said the corrections officer who was attacked was not seriously injured, and the inmates involved in the attack went back into their cells voluntarily after additional correctional officers responded to the incident.
Another account of the attack came from Annette Mason, who said her husband Jonaven Mason was locked in a cell several doors away from Kosi in the same segregation unit that night.
According to Annette Mason, Jonaven looked out the window in the door of his cell as he was speaking to his wife on the phone, and told her a guard was giving keys to an inmate. He did not indicate that the guard was being attacked, she said.
After the stabbing Jonaven told her there was blood everywhere and that one of the inmates involved in the assault yelled “You’re next, Mason.”
The attack on Daniel Kosi at Saguaro Correctional Center follows the murder of another Hawaii inmate at the same Arizona prison in May. (Cory Lum/Civil Beat).
Breiner, who is Mason’s lawyer, said after the stabbing Mason requested that he be placed on suicide watch in the prison medical unit. That allowed him to be transferred out of the administrative segregation unit and into a safer area, a move that was for his own protection, Breiner said.
The Hawaii Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and CoreCivic, which operates Saguaro prison, both declined to comment on the case Monday, citing the ongoing investigation.
The state currently holds 1,001 prisoners at Saguaro because there is no room for them in Hawaii prisons.
The July 27 attack comes two months after another Hawaii prisoner at Saguaro was apparently murdered in his cell in another area of the facility.
Breiner said the latest assault is disturbing.
“What’s troubling to me is that Saguaro has a reputation for being — relatively speaking — the safest place for Hawaii inmates, safer than Halawa (Correctional Facility) or OCCC or the other county lockups on the neighbor islands,” Breiner said, referring to the Oahu Community Correctional Center.
For an inmate in that Saguaro segregation unit to be released from his cell unshackled with only one corrections officer to accompany him “suggests either a complete breakdown in their procedures, or something else is going on,” Breiner said.
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Publish date : 2024-08-05 23:01:00
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