Three alleged prison rioters appeared in court Tuesday on accusations that they attacked guards with a mop handle, a food tray and a kettle of boiling water.
According to Crown prosecutor Gail Douglas, the alleged riot broke out before midnight at Prince Albert Correctional Centre on July 21. Three inmates, Rene Merasty, Conrad Merasty and Jonathon Tremblay, are charged with assaulting and confining correctional officers and causing damage to prison property.
“I think the place was shut down for a while,” Douglas said.
She said the incident began when the three men spread water over the floor of their range, apparently to make it slippery. She said they then used a mop handle, a kettle containing boiling water and a metal food tray to attack guards, and surrounded two of them for a short period of time.
“They couldn’t get back to where they were supposed to be, because there were inmates on either side of them,” she said.
Douglas said that she did not have any reports suggesting that any of the correctional officers were seriously injured.
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice confirmed that the riot occurred at about 10 p.m. on July 21.
“It is alleged that three offenders in Prince Albert Correctional Centre’s Remand Unit refused to return to their cells when ordered to do so,” said ministry spokesman Noel Busse. “The situation escalated but at no time did staff lose control of the area.”
Busse told the Daily Herald that none of the correctional workers required immediate medical attention. He said the disturbance did not cause any infrastructure damage to the correctional centre, but resulted in minor damage to some “household items.”
Merasty, Merasty and Tremblay are each facing two counts of forcible confinement and three counts of assaulting an officer with a weapon. They are also charged with participation in a riot and an unlawful assembly, as well as mischief for unlawfully damaging property.
They are set to appear in Saskatchewan Provincial Court in Prince Albert again on Thursday.
