Riot By Ohio Death Row Inmates Controlled Tactical Team Uses Tear Gas, Surprise To End Uprising; Cause Under Investigation

A riot in the state prison’s death row unit was brought under control within five hours after a tactical team stormed the facility with tear gas.

“They went in with skill and with a plan and some surprise,” Warden Ralph Coyle said.

Death row inmates at the Mansfield Correctional Institution were confined to their cells in lockdown conditions Saturday.

State officials would not speculate on a cause of Friday’s riot because it remained under investigation.

But the disturbance may have been linked to death row inmate Wilford Berry’s desire to abandon appeals and become the first Ohio inmate to be executed since 1963, Prisons Department director Reginald Wilkinson told The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Coyle said Saturday that Berry, who was beaten in the riot, is unpopular with other inmates. But Berry did not know whether that was the cause of the riot.

Berry was one of five inmates hospitalized in stable condition Saturday. A guard and a member of the tactical team were treated and released.

The uprising started when inmates grabbed keys from three guards during Friday’s evening meal, prison spokesman Joe Andrews said.

The prisoners used the keys to release all 37 convicts in one of five “pods” that make up the death row unit, which houses Ohio’s 173 death row inmates. The other four pods were not involved in the uprising.

The death row unit at Mansfield is separated from others at the prison, 60 miles northeast of Columbus.

Berry was convicted for killing his boss three days after he was hired at a bakery in late 1989.

Charles Mitroff Jr. died after Berry shot him while robbing the Cleveland bakery.