Inmates overpowered correctional staff and took over parts of a jail in eastern North Carolina early Monday, but the siege ended hours later when law enforcement officers entered the facility and seized control.
Three guards and 88 inmates were inside the Bertie-Martin Regional Detention Center in Windsor when the takeover began at about 5 a.m., prompting an immediate response from local, state and federal authorities, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement posted on social media.
By early afternoon, the Bureau of Investigation and the FBI had “cleared the facility,” the state bureau said in a statement. ”All inmates and staff are safe and accounted for, and those who sustained injuries have received treatment.”
Inmates have been transferred to other facilities and the jail will remain secured while the damage is assessed, the Bureau of Investigation said. The 90-bed jail located about 120 miles east of Raleigh houses pretrial detainees and short-term inmates for Bertie and Martin counties.
Inmates took two guards captive and the third guard escaped. Negotiations led to the release of the two guards along with 80 inmates, leaving only eight inmates inside, Bertie County Sheriff Tyrone Ruffin said at a news conference.
Ruffin said the two guards who were released were undergoing medical treatment but he had no details about their injuries.
Most of the remaining inmates “complied and exited the facility as soon as entry was made,” said Chad Flowers, a spokesperson for the State Bureau of Investigation.
It wasn’t immediately known whether officers fired any lethal or non-lethal rounds upon entering the jail. In a telephone interview, Flowers said law enforcement officials were in a meeting about the incident and unavailable late Monday afternoon.
Flowers also referred questions about the facility’s security to a jail administrator, who did not immediately return a telephone message. Authorities have not addressed why there were three guards overseeing the jail at the time of the takeover.
“The perpetrators must be held accountable for this horrifying action,” Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said on the social platform X. “We also must do everything in our power to ensure this doesn’t happen again – and that includes doing more to recruit, retain, and compensate the county and state officials who are charged with keeping our jails and prisons safe.”
Ruffin did not indicate what caused the takeover.
“Right now we have a lot going on that we’re trying to get under control,” he said. “I will release that information to the public as soon as I can.”
