By Alex Riggins
The Times-News
BOISE, Idaho — A Twin Falls murder convict serving life in prison for murdering a bystander during a 2011 standoff at a Twin Falls hotel injured three prison guards and another inmate Thursday at a Boise prison, officials said.
Clark Jackson Cleveland, 32, of Spring Creek, Nev., was armed with a padlock wrapped in a T-shirt when he got into a fight about 9:30 a.m. in a recreation area of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, prison spokesman Jeff Ray said.
When three Idaho Department of Correction officers stepped in to stop the assault, they became victims themselves.
“Two of the officers and the inmate who was assaulted suffered serious injuries and were taken to a local hospital via ambulance,” Ray said in a statement. “The third officer suffered less serious injuries and was taken to the hospital in a state vehicle.”
None of the injuries are believed to be life threatening. The Ada County Sheriff’s Office is investigating, and all visitations to the maximum-security prison has been suspended through Sunday.
Cleveland, convicted in Ada County last year for assaulting an inmate at the Idaho State Correctional Institution, has been in prison since December 2011 when he was sentenced to life without parole for murdering Tracy Ivie during a standoff July 15, 2011, at the Twin Falls Hampton Inn.
Cleveland told police he believed Ivie, a Utah family man, was a plain-clothes officer.
Then 26, Cleveland also shot Idaho State Police Trooper Nick Walker and took a woman hostage during the standoff, which began after police chased him throughout the county and ended hours after he expended all of his ammunition.
Cleveland had sought refuge in the hotel after crashing into several cars, and once inside threatened to kill a Twin Falls man who, believing he had witnessed a simple hit-and-run, had followed Cleveland inside.
“I will kill you, I will kill you,” Cleveland told Jeff Bulkley while taking aim at him with his Smith & Wesson .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Cleveland then went up the elevator to the second floor, where he grabbed Sharon Knudsen, a California woman in town on her way to Montana for a funeral. Taking Knudsen hostage, he told her she would act as his mother and they would leave calmly down the stairwell.
But on the stairs, Cleveland and his hostage encountered police, and Cleveland opened fire, striking Walker in the thigh. Cleveland then retreated to the third floor of the hotel, where he saw Ivie running. He shot him in the chest and abdomen.
“I thought he was a cop,” Cleveland later told police. “I don’t remember him wearing a uniform or nothing. I thought he was a cop — an off-duty cop or something.”
Cleveland, out of ammunition, surrendered about three hours later, but not before pretending to reload his gun and threatening to lob a grenade he didn’t actually have.
A Twin Falls grand jury indicted him on 12 felony charges about two weeks after the standoff, and he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, aggravated battery on an officer and second-degree kidnapping.
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©2017 The Times-News (Twin Falls, Idaho)