Variety of assaults on facility's staff are up in '05

One guard had to have bone fragments removed from her brain.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Assaults on staff are up in one of Ohio's toughest prisons this year, including a recent attack on a guard so severe that a surgeon had to remove skull fragments from her brain.
At the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, a maximum-security prison and site of a 1993 riot that killed nine inmates and a guard, the state has recorded 169 attacks on guards this year, a 42-percent increase over last year and the highest in five years. The bulk of the increase consisted of the throwing of bodily substances such as feces at guards, according to a breakdown of data collected by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
But physical assaults with minor injuries also are up 72 percent, from 25 last year to 43 this year.
Assaults are up statewide, with 532 attacks on guards so far this year, a 19-percent increase over last year.
Attack on female guard
One of the worst assaults was a Dec. 5 attack at Lucasville on guard Marda Abrams, who was punched in the face, then beaten with her own 24-inch baton, according to union and department officials.
Abrams, 43, has been hospitalized since the attack and faces surgery to repair multiple broken bones, including a fractured skull, jaw and nose, and numerous broken teeth.
The inmate suspected in the attack, Gary Hicks, was transferred to Ross Correctional Institution the night of the attack.
A surgeon had to remove fragments of bone from Abrams' brain after the assault, said Curtis Campbell, a Lucasville guard in charge of inmates' afternoon recreation and the head of the prison's union chapter. He called it the most serious assault on an officer since the 1993 riot.
The attack follows a September homicide at Lucasville, the first homicide at the prison since the riots, as well as two suicides this year.
Despite the overall increase in assaults at Lucasville, serious physical assaults stayed constant -- with nine this year and last.
In addition, serious assaults are constant statewide, while minor assaults and the throwing of bodily substances accounted for most of the increase. The prison system hasn't analyzed the data closely enough to know why assaults are up overall, said spokeswoman Andrea Dean.
The assault on Abrams was a "vicious, unprovoked" attack that will be prosecuted, said Terry Collins, DRC's executive director.
But Collins said there's no correlation between the assault on Abrams and the September homicide and said he's confident that Lucasville is under control.
"One incident in and by itself doesn't mean your system is in turmoil," Collins said.
Abrams, a second-shift officer in charge of monitoring inmates as they move around the prison, was attacked in a prison corridor just before 7 p.m.
Accused inmate
Hicks, 35, was an inmate porter in charge of serving food and cleanup in that unit. He's serving an eight-year sentence out of Belmont County for selling drugs and assault, according to prison records.
Hicks ran from the scene but was captured moments later after encountering two other guards and a prison nurse, according to Campbell and the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which is investigating.
Inmates at Lucasville generally come from other institutions where they broke prison rules, such as attacking other inmates or guards, for example.