Prisoners indicted after guard stabbed

Corrections officer Matt Mathias slowly recovering from attack.

Three-time killer COLUMBUS —

Casey Pigge and a second prisoner, Greg Reinke, were indicted on multiple felony charges in Scioto County Common Pleas Court last week related to an attack that severely injured a state prison guard.

Pigge and Reinke are each facing attempted aggravated murder, felonious assault, kidnapping and other charges for the Feb. 20 brutal attack on corrections officer Matt Mathias, who has yet to return to work.

“He’s still recovering. It’s going to be a super long haul for him,” said Sally Meckling, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents guards. Mathias suffered 32 stab wounds.

Reinke, 38, and Pigge, 30, are now both being held at the Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax security facility near Youngstown.

Pigge has proved to be a dangerous inmate in the state prison system.

September 2008: Pigge killed his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Rhonda Sommers, and set her home on fire. Fourteen months later, he pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 30 years to life in prison.

February 2016: He beat to death Luther Wade of Springfield while the two were housed together at Lebanon Correctional Institution. After the murder, officials found a hole in the wall between two high-security cells so large that Pigge regularly shimmied through it so he could play cards with the prisoners next door.

February 2017: While on a prison bus after pleading guilty to the Wade murder, Pigge slipped off his belly chain and used it to strangle to death inmate David Johnson, a 61-year-old sex offender. Guards on the bus maintain that they didn’t hear what was happening. In September 2017, he was sentenced to 25 years to life.

February 2018: Mathias was attacked at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

Reinke was imprisoned for a 2004 fatal shooting in Cleveland. In a different attack on other inmates last year, he slipped out of handcuffs and stabbed four inmates who were handcuffed to a table, according to prison reports.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction commissioned a review after the attack on Mathias. The consultant concluded that it’s “probable that staff complacency significantly contributed” to the incident.

The union reached an agreement with DRC in April requiring increased security requirements for moving dangerous inmates. Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.