Prison Riot Quelled Within 5 Hours

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 after the riot. State officials would not speculate on a cause of the 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, prison department Director Reginald Wilkinson told the Cincinnati Enquirer.