As South Carolina governor Henry McMaster was referencing “threats from inside our prisons” during his 2018 State of the State address, an inmate at one of those prisons was succumbing to injuries sustained behind bars.
Deshawn Williams, 39, was imprisoned at Evans Correctional Institution – one of the many S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDC) facilities that has been plagued by escalating violence in recent years.
According to prison officials, Williams was transported from the facility on Wednesday to receive medical attention for unspecified injuries. He died while receiving treatment.
A source familiar with the situation told us Evans died of “blunt force trauma to the head with a sharp object.”
No information has been released regarding how Williams was injured. We’re told he was found “alone in his cell” and that staff at the facility assumed he had fallen prior to taking him to the hospital.
All we know for now is that the incident is under investigation by SCDC’s police services division.
Williams was serving time on a variety of drug and robbery charges – all of them filed in Charleston County, S.C. His prison sentence was scheduled to run through September of 2021, although he was eligible for parole in May of this year.
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Evans is a level two (medium security) facility located near Bennettsville, S.C. It has been the site of several recent outbreaks of violence, including a major altercation that took place last November.
This news site has devoted extensive bandwidth of late to the myriad of problems plaguing the South Carolina prison system.
To read some of our recent reports chronicling this untenable situation, click here, here and here.
And to read some of our proposed solutions, click here.
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