By Bryan Denson
The Oregonian
PORTLAND, Ore. — An Oregon corrections officer in Pendleton shot and killed a 26-year-old prisoner Friday morning after witnessing him savagely beating another inmate on a recreation yard, officials reported.
The officer, who has not been identified, saw two inmates pummeling another on the west-side yard of Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution at a little after 9 a.m., said corrections spokeswoman Elizabeth Craig.
No warning shot was fired, she said, but the officer took the only means left to prevent what he thought would be severe injuries to the inmate being beaten.
He fired a single shot, hitting inmate Jayson Matthew Withers, who was taken to a local hospital.
Withers, who was serving the back end of an 8 1/2-year sentence out of Marion County for robbery, identity theft and criminally negligent homicide., was pronounced dead at 9:21 a.m.
The prison, which sits about a mile west of the home of the famed Pendleton Round-Up rodeo grounds, was placed in lockdown after the shooting.
Friday’s beating victim was taken to a nearby hospital, Craig said. The other prisoner involved in his assault was put in the disciplinary segregation unit at the prison. The names of neither man have been released.
It was not clear whether the officer who fired the fatal shot shouted or otherwise called for a halt to the beating, Craig said.
Corrections officers sometimes fire warning shots to break up fights on prison recreation yards. Friday’s shooting appears to be the first in more than 30 years in which a tower officer shot and killed an inmate, Craig said.
Oregon Department of Corrections policy allows employees to use lethal force after they have considered every reasonable means of control. This includes shooting an inmate to “prevent imminent serious bodily injury or death to one’s self or another person.”
Three years ago this month, Corrections Officer Jeff Curtis shot and wounded an inmate at Snake River Correctional Institution.
In that incident, two inmates had knocked another prisoner to the ground. As their victim doubled up, one of the inmates continued kicking him in the head. Curtis shouldered a Ruger Mini-14 rifle and fired a .223-caliber round into the hip of the attacking inmate, who survived the wound.
Oregon State Police and the Umatilla County District Attorney’s office are investigating the incident.