Part of prison on ArizonaMexico border locked down

PHOENIX — A mediumsecurity unit of a southern Arizona prison near the U.S.-Mexico border was on lockdown Monday after a huge brawl that injured 17 inmates, with one group of prisoners trying to escape attackers by climbing up onto a building and throwing objects down at them. Six corrections officers who were assaulted in the melee suffered minor wounds.

Movement was restricted and visits were canceled at the state prison complex’s 950-inmate Mohave Unit in Douglas while authorities investigate the disturbance that began Sunday night in the prison yard, Arizona Corrections Department spokesman Andrew Wilder said. The inmates in that unit are housed in dormitories rather than cells and under normal conditions are allowed free access to the yard into the evening, he said.

The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office said it was alerted to the riot before 8 p.m. Sunday and the U.S. Border Patrol and the Arizona Department of Public Safety were called in to help secure the area around the complex.

Wilder said the fighting lasted about an hour before corrections officials brought the situation under control.

The corrections department spokesman said preliminary information indicates the disturbance began when a group of Hispanic inmates and a group of non-Hispanic whites began fighting in the unit’s yard.