Columbia, SC (AP)--State senators on the committee looking over South Carolina prisons may bring Corrections Department officials before them to investigate two separate hostage situations at the same maximum security prison twice in the last three months.
Sen.. Shane Massey said he is concerned about the incidents involving prisoners at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville. In the past four years, there have been three hostage situations and four large fights. In two of those fights, officers had to abandon a dorm and launch tear gas into it to break up the incidents.
The most recent case at the prison occurred Thursday evening when inmates took a guard hostage. The officer was released after about five hours and was not seriously injured.
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