Inmate dead inside prison

Man was serving time for assaulting prison guards

A Chester County man who had been serving time in state prison for attacking corrections officers at the Chester County Prison has died while incarcerated.

Authorities at Graterford Prison in Montgomery County reported Friday that Christopher Stephon Gilchrist, 31, formerly of West Chester, was found unresponsive in his cell at the prison about 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Prison staff responded immediately and started life-saving measures until prison medical personnel arrived. A doctor from the Einstein Medical Center pronounced Gilchrist dead at 9:55 p.m.

Prison authorities notified state police of the death, as they do in all cases when an inmate dies. The state police will conduct an investigation, and turn their results over to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, which will issue a final cause of death.

Members of Gilchrist’s family were notified of his death, a release from the state Department of Corrections stated.

Gilchrist was serving a sen-

tence of 7½ to 15 years for a series of attacks on both corrections officers and a county inmate. At the time of his sentencing in March 2008, Judge Anthony Sarcione said that he took Gilchrist’s mental health problems

into account, and that he would be able to get treatment for his condition while in prison.

His attorney at the time, Assistant Public Defender Kathleen Boyer, told Sarcione that a psychologist believed that brain damage, probably from beatings as a child, caused Gilchrist to be depressed, paranoid and subject to irrational

outbursts.

Gilchrist made headlines in June 2007 when he was charged with conspiring with two corrections officers at the prison to attack another inmate in his cell. The inmate had been unruly and the two officers — John Hampton of Philadelphia and Charles Goodman of Coatesville — arranged for Gilchrist to have access to the cell and to attack him. Hampton and Goodman, who were fired after their arrest, also were charged with falsifying prison reports in an attempt to cover up the attack.