Second inmate stabbed at Alvin S. Glenn this week said attack ‘came out of nowhere’
An inmate has been charged with stabbing another inmate at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, the second time this week such an incident has happened in the Richland County jail.
James Alterique White, 24, was charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for the alleged stabbing a 30-year-old inmate inside of the jail on Tuesday. The victim, who suffered a 3-inch laceration to his upper body, told Richland County Sheriff’s Department deputies that the attack “came out of nowhere,” according to an incident report.
White is in jail and awaiting trial on charges related to a fatal shooting in December.
This latest stabbing happened two days after another inmate was stabbed with an “improvised weapon” inside of the jail, according to the Sheriff’s Department. On Monday, Sabian Bryant, 19, was charged with the stabbing that took place a day earlier.
It wasn’t immediately known what was used in the second stabbing. That detail was redacted in an incident report.
The two stabbings come with Richland County in in the middle of multimillion-dollar overhaul of the jail, which has seen repeat instances of violence while also struggling with unsettled leadership, understaffing and deteriorating structural conditions.
The State has reached out to Richland County administration and the jail for comment.
“I have lost count of the number of bodies at Alvin S. Glenn,” said Ally Benevento, an attorney at the Strom Law Firm. The firm is is suing the jail after the death of Lason Butler, who died of dehydration inside the jail after he was arrested for reckless driving.
”It is painfully apparent at this point to everyone that they can’t deny at this stage that it is more than just chronic understaffing at the jail,” Benevento told The State on Friday.
The Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating the incident, has not released any additional information on the victim.
The conditions at the jail have led to a number of high-profile incidents, including the killing of Antonious Randolph on Jan. 27. Randolph was tortured and beaten to death by a group of inmates. Investigators from the Sheriff’s Department later found that the inmates took advantage of cell doors that did not lock, allowing them to “come and go from their cells.”
After a series of damning inspection reports, Richland County was given an April 18 deadline to provide a “strategy for remedial action” to the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
At a recent council meeting, administrator Leonardo Brown and interim jail director Creighton Harvey discussed many of the planned reforms, including a $2.5 million retrofit of the jail’s locks and the creation of a new compliance director position.
Benevento said she and attorney Bakari Sellers have asked the civil rights division of the Department of Justice to investigate the jail. But the overwhelming majority of the inmates are pre-trial detainees, meaning they have not been found guilty of a crime, Benevento said.
“This is a category of helpless people, and it is our responsibility to take care of them,” Benevento said. “We should not, as taxpaying citizens, just sit back and allow this to happen.”
White has been incarcerated in Alvin S. Glenn since January 2022, when he was charged in a fatal shooting of a woman as she left a bar on Fairfield Road the previous December. Joyel T. Snell, 45, of Fort Myers, Florida was walking out of Felicity’s Bar and Grill north of Columbia on the morning of Dec. 12, 2021 when she was struck and killed by gunfire.
Investigators said White and another individual, 26-year-old Malcolm Clinton, were seen exiting the bar and got into a vehicle from which shots were fired. At the time, White was out on bond for a slew of weapons charges and the attempted murder of a security guard at a hookah lounge on Broad River Road in May 2021.
