Prison officer was ‘murdered in cold blood,’ father’s lawsuit says
The father of Sgt. Meggan Callahan, a correctional officer killed in a 2017 inmate riot, has sued the state Department of Public Safety for sending an understaffed crew to handle the dangerous murder convict who killed his daughter with a fire extinguisher.
John Joseph Callahan filed the suit in federal court on April 25, alleging that the state knew Craig Wissink had a history of violence and kept him out of the closest custody despite his record for fighting, drugs and keeping a contraband phone.
Wissink told authorities at Bertie Correctional Institute (BCI) in rural eastern North Carolina that he was having homicidal thoughts one week before he started a fire in a trash can inside the D block of Tan Unit 2, where somewhere between 80 and 288 inmates were housed, the suit said.
Callahan, a 29-year-old sergeant hired in 2012, rushed from her office to the fire, the suit said, but as she tried to extinguish it Wissink threw boiling water in her face, having heated it in a microwave. The code went out for an inmate riot.
“Inmate Wissink grabbed the fire extinguisher from Sgt. Callahan after she fell down and repeatedly struck her with it,” the suit said. “Inmate Wissink murdered Sgt. Callahan in cold blood without interference.”
In a statement Tuesday, the Department of Public safety called Callahan’s death a “horrible tragedy.”
“The Department of Public Safety remains committed to the safety and security of its staff, those in custody and ultimately the public and has implemented many reforms including additional training and safety equipment for correctional staff and changes to hold offenders more accountable for assaults on staff,” according to the statement released by spokesman Jerry Higgins. “Many other safety improvements are in process, as well as some currently being piloted in state prisons.”
He referred those seeking information on the department’s prison reform efforts to the DPS Prison Reform webpage: bit.ly/2ZLcwHL
‘Safe staffing’ plan
Callahan’s lawsuit said DPS “safe staffing” plan mandated that least four officers should have been working with his daughter that night, one of them in the control center and three others with adequate training.
Instead, the suit said, one of those positions was vacant, waiting for DPS to hire someone, and two of the other three were new hires with no training in inmate emergencies or use of batons or pepper spray.
“She rushed in to harm’s way to attempt to save lives,” the suit said, “as the policies and protocols required her to do, without any of the safety support network that DPS and BCI required must be present.”
Callahan’s slaying brought the death toll from prison attacks to four, prompting a review in the state legislature.
Her family sued Wissink in 2017, seeking more than $25,000 in damages. At the time of the attack, Wissink was already serving a life sentence for a 2004 murder. DPS lists his status now as “high security/maximum control.”
Prison officials promoted Wissink from close to medium custody in 2007, the suit said, then kept him there after a fight in Nash Correctional in 2013. His discipline record showed multiple other offenses, including possession of an illegal drug, before he was moved back to close custody in 2015.
A year later, the state promoted him again.
Along with DPS the lawsuit names five prison officials as defendants: Annie D. Harvey, David A. Mills, Demetrius A. Clark, Anthony K. Spruill and Orry C. Slade.
“The actions of the Defendants described above were outrageous, in bad faith, and were taken without any reasonable grounds to support them,” the suit said.
Callahan, the plaintiff, is seeking a judgment keeping DPS from placing employees in such dangerous situations in the future. Also it seeks compensation “to adequately make her family whole for what this tragedy has wrought to include for her loss of life, loss of income and benefits, for the emotional injuries this murder caused, and any additional emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment, and other pain she and her family have suffered.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2019 at 11:53 AM.