Inmates in a North Carolina jail overpowered correctional staff Monday, seizing parts of Bertie-Martin Regional Detention Center, until law enforcement officers entered the facility and took back control.
Three guards and 88 inmates were inside the Windsor jail when the takeover occurred around 5 a.m., the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
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 from the 90-bed jail, located 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of Raleigh, have been transferred to other facilities, the Bureau of Investigation confirmed. The site, housing pretrial detainees and short-term inmates for Bertie and Martin counties, will remain secured while damage is assessed.
Inmates took two guards captive and a third guard escaped, Bertie County Sheriff Tyrone Ruffin said at a news conference.
Negotiations eventually led to the release of the two guards along with 80 inmates, leaving only eight inmates inside. The guards were released “without further injury,” but officials did not elaborate on their conditions.
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.
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