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MURDERED BY
 OTHER LOST LOVES
RODNEY STARCHER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEDINA COUNTY INMATE DIES IN PRISON
Starcher, 40, assaulted while in cell with another man for disciplinary reasons
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rodney Starcher, 40, died Sunday at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Starcher was assaulted about 11:30 a.m. Saturday while inside a segregation cell with another inmate, officials said.
They were being kept apart from other inmates for disciplinary reasons, Dean said.
State Highway Patrol investigators are gathering evidence and taking statements from witnesses that will be turned over to prosecutors, who will decide whether criminal charges are filed, said Lt. Tony Bradshaw, a patrol spokesman.
Starcher was serving a one-year sentence out of Medina County for failure to comply. He began serving the term Oct. 12.
Another Pickaway inmate, Andrew Stein, was assaulted Jan. 22 while in a prison hospital and died Feb. 4.
The Pickaway County prosecutor is awaiting final autopsy results before pursuing charges in the death, which a patrol investigation concluded was a homicide.
Stein, 47, was to have been released in July after a two-year sentence on a domestic violence conviction for beating his former wife. He was from Harrison, near Cincinnati.
THOMAS RAYMOND BROTHERTON
NEWS ENQUIRER
INMATE DIES AFTER HANGING
FOURTH SUCH DEATH SINCE JUNE
An inmate at the Butler County Jail died in a hospital Sunday after he was found hanging in a jail cell.
The 19-year-old man was at least the fourth inmate to apparently
commit suicide at the jail since June.
On Saturday, a corrections officer found him hanging by a bed sheet in his cell at 5:10 p.m. in the main correctional complex on Hanover Street in Hamilton.
He was taken to the Fort Hamilton Hospital, then transported to
University Hospital in Cincinnati, where he remained Sunday, jail officials said. Jail officials announced he died around 5:25 p.m.
The inmate had been in prison for about three weeks on charges that included robbery and possession of drugs, according to the sheriff's office.
Jail officials said more information is expected to be released today.
The death came about a week after the March 31 death of Thomas Raymond Brotherton, 49, of West Chester Township. He had been booked in Jan. 16 for a parole violation.
Authorities in Bergen County, N.J., had ordered a hold on him.
In June 2006, two Butler County jail inmates died a week apart. Elmer Eli Tucker, 38, of Eaton, died June 17 and Delbert Osborne Jr., 19, of Hamilton, died June 22.
Corrections officers found all three men hanging in their cells.
The American Civil Liberties Union sought an investigation into the June deaths.
RODNEY JOHNSON
Associated Press
INMATES BLAME PRISON STAFFER FOR INJURIES FROM LIGHTNING
Recreation chief forced them to finish ballgame in storm, 2 suits allege
COLUMBUS - A recreation director at an Ohio prison threatened inmates
with a loss of privileges if they stopped a softball game during a
storm from which lightning later killed one prisoner and injured
several others, according to two inmate lawsuits.
Scott Tomlison, activity therapist at Chillicothe Correctional
Institution in south-central Ohio, told prisoners they would lose
recreational activities for six months if they didn't keep playing
during the storm on June 29, 2005, according to a lawsuit filed in
the Ohio Court of Claims.
Former inmate Barrel Brown said he and several other prisoners asked
Tomlison to stop the game on an outdoor field as part of an inmate
softball league. The fields are inside the prison walls.
``Tomlison refused to call off the game and ordered the inmates to
continue playing,'' said Brown's June 27 lawsuit, which said he was
seriously injured by the lightning strike.
A similar lawsuit, filed last year in federal court, says Tomlison
forced inmates to play despite the lightning and even though another
game had been called off.
Eddie Mack said that he and other inmates asked that the game be
called, fearing the storm would ``cause injuries to players,''
according to the lawsuit filed Feb. 6, 2006, in U.S. District Court
in Columbus.
Mack, in a lawsuit he filed himself, said he had pain, spasms and
tingling throughout his body.
Tomlison declined to comment. Prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said
the agency does not discuss pending litigation. She said Tomlison was
not disciplined ``because he didn't do anything wrong.''
The Ohio attorney general's office is reviewing Brown's lawsuit.
In response to the lawsuit filed by Mack, the state said it did
nothing wrong and the suit should be dismissed, according to
documents filed with U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley.
A report by Tomlison obtained by the Associated Press shows he let
the game continue as the storm began.
``It started to rain about 7:50 p.m. on the north ball diamond but
not bad enough to call the ballgame,'' the report said. ``I watched
the weather and continued the game because it was the last inning and
almost over.''
The report said Tomlison then called the game on the prison's south
field because it was only half over.
At that point, referring to the north field, ``Lightning was spotted
around the field, and before I was able to get the game stopped, two
bolts of lightning crashed around the 1st and second base areas,''
Tomlison's report said.
Other guards' reports show prison officials took the storm seriously
even before the lightning strike.
At 7:59 p.m., prison officials ordered vehicles to patrol the
perimeter because of the weather, according to one report. Such
action is normal during storms in case fences are affected by high
winds or lightning, Dean said.
But reports also show a swift storm that moved in fast with
relatively little time to react.
``Within a minute or so after the rain began, I heard thunder
followed by lightning,'' said another guard's report. ``At that time,
I heard radio traffic stating a inmate was down on the north ball
field.''
Brown was hospitalized at Adena Regional Medical Center for almost a
month, his lawyer, Todd Mollaun, said Tuesday.
Tomlison, 34, has a bachelor's degree from Glenville State College in
West Virginia, where he played football and studied sports management
and marketing, according to his state personnel file. Tomlison, who
also played semiprofessional football with the Syracuse Storm,
started at the Chillicothe prison in 1999.
Brown, 33, served 10 years for voluntary manslaughter in Hamilton
County before being released to a halfway house in 2005.
Mack, 46, of Butler County is still in the Chillicothe prison serving
seven years on robbery convictions in Butler County.
The lightning strike killed inmate Rodney Johnson, 40, of Hamilton
County, who was serving a five-year sentence for robbery. The strike
injured six other inmates and two guards.
DELBERT OSBORNE JR.
BY SHEILA MCLAUGHLIN
ANOTHER BUTLER INMATE FOUND HANGED
HAMILTON – The second inmate in a week has been discovered hanging in
his cell at the Butler County Jail.
Corrections officers found Delbert Osborne Jr., 19, of Hamilton, dead
about 7:15 p.m. Thursday, sheriff’s officials said. An autopsy will
be performed today to determine if Osborne committed suicide.
Osborne was arrested in April on receiving stolen property, burglary
and felonious assault charges, according to court documents. He was
due in Butler County Common Pleas Court July 11 for a hearing to
plead or set a trial date.
Osborne was alone in his cell, but was not on a suicide watch,
deputies said.
"We had a lot of problems out of him," said Lt. Mike Craft, deputy
jail warden. "He has had fights in here and he was bunked by himself
for other peoples' safety."
A corrections officer had seen Osborne alive in his cell when he was
served dinner about 45 minutes before he was found hanging.
Jail standards call for inmates to be checked every hour.
In the previous case, the coroner has not officially ruled on the
cause of death of Elmer Eli Tucker, 38, of Eaton, who was found
hanging in his cell June 17. But officials have said it was an
apparent suicide.
Tucker had been jailed for six days on felony drug charges.
GARRY D. OWENS
ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
PRISON SYSTEM REPORTS FOURTH INMATE SUICIDE OF YEAR
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Contrary to a consultant's recommendation for helping to prevent suicides, the state is screening some but not all inmates entering segregation units.
The prison system, which had 1,507 inmates in segregation Monday,
does not have enough employees to undertake such a review, officials
said.
"It's going to be very fairly staff intensive and we don't have the
staff to be able to do that," said Debbie Nixon-Hughes, chief of
mental health services for the Department of Rehabilitation and
Correction.
Four inmates have committed suicide this year, including an inmate in
segregation who hanged himself Saturday. That death, which led to the
suspension of two guards, was the latest in a series that included a
record 11 suicides last year.
Garry D. Owens, 31, of Lucas County, was found dead in his
segregation cell Saturday night at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility in Lucasville, prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said Monday.
Owens, serving a 15 years-to-life sentence for murder, hanged himself
with a bedsheet attached to the cell door, said Sgt. Stephanie Norman
of the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
He'd been in segregation because of a fight with another inmate last
Thursday.
The state placed two guards at the prison on paid leave while
investigating Owens' death. Dean said there was evidence the two may
not have been doing their jobs, but she would not elaborate.
Kyle Burdett, 21, was hired in October and William Riffle, 31, was
hired in January 2004. Both earn $30,400. Messages were left seeking
comment.
In a 34-page report released last November, consultant Lindsay Hayes
said the state has strong suicide prevention measures in place but
made some recommendations for change, including the screening of all
inmates in segregation.
Hayes said inmates accustomed to privileges in the regular prison
population often suffer a shock when disciplined, placing them at a
higher risk for suicide.
"Losing all that which they had earned becomes quite a devastation to
them, and one reaction to that might be a suicide attempt," said
Hayes, project director of the Baltimore-based National Center on
Institutions and Alternatives.
Of the four inmates who committed suicide this year, Owens was the
only one in segregation.
At Hayes' recommendation, the state in April began screening all
segregated inmates with previously identified mental health problems,
as well as inmates in protective custody.
The latter are inmates who fear some kind of harm in prison.
Last month, an inmate at the Correctional Reception Center near
Columbus hanged himself with a bed sheet, and an inmate on death row
at the Mansfield Correctional Institution hanged himself with a nylon
belt that he tied around the frame of his bunk bed.
An inmate at the Warren Correctional Institution near Lebanon hanged
himself in February.
Nationally, the inmate suicide rate is 13 deaths for every 100,000
prisoners, Hayes said.
"It's going to take at least a several-month period of time for all
those corrective actions to be in place," Hayes said Monday.
"They're not meant to eliminate inmate suicides," he said. "Every
system will have inmate suicides, particularly a system as large as
the state of Ohio. The goal is to strive to keep them as low as
possible."
Prison officials and the State Highway Patrol are investigating
Owens' death.
ANDREW STEIN
Associated Press
INMATE BEATEN, KILLED AT PRISON HOSPITAL
COLUMBUS, Ohio - An inmate was beaten to death while in a prison
hospital to receive a pacemaker, and investigators are about ask a
grand jury to charge another inmate who is a suspect, the State
Highway Patrol said Friday.
Andrew Stein, 47, of Harrison, died Feb. 4 at Ohio State University
Medical Center after his daughter asked that life support be
withdrawn, the state prisons department said. He had been assaulted
on Jan. 22 while in the medical wing of Pickaway Correctional
Institution in Orient, where he was having a pacemaker implanted
because of a heart attack.
The State Highway Patrol has interviewed several witnesses and a
suspect who is another inmate, but his name won't be released unless
the grand jury decides to charge him, said Sgt. Brett Gockstetter,
patrol spokesman. Stein's skull was fractured in the beating, but no
weapon was used, he said.
A message seeking comment was left for Pickaway County Prosecutor
Judy Wolford.
Stein was to have been released in July after a two-year sentence on
a domestic violence conviction for beating his former wife.
His daughter, Kristy McArthur, asked that life support be removed
because he had expressed his wishes about being comatose in a letter
from prison.
McArthur, 22, complained that the shackles holding each wrist to the
side of the bed were not removed after he died.
''I know he was a prisoner, but he was gone,'' she said. ''Let him
die with some dignity.''
Department policy is to remove the shackles only when requested by
medical staff for a procedure or when the inmate is removed from the
hospital room, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction.
Services are 7:30 tonight at Evans Funeral Home in Milford.
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