Supermax guard in line for state officer of year award

YOUNGSTOWN

William Tungate underwent a baptism by fire as an Ohio National Guardsman deployed for nine days to the April 1993 Lucasville prison riot.

Twenty-two years later, he has been chosen by his corrections-officer peers as the Ohio State Penitentiary Corrections Officer of the Year.

At a May 1 banquet at the Corrections Training Academy in Orient, Ohio, he’ll learn whether he or one of 24 other candidates will become the state corrections officer of the year.

Tungate was a military policeman with the Ohio National Guard’s Austintown-based 838th Military Police Co., when he was assigned to perimeter patrol during the 11-day riot by 450 inmates at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.

Nine inmates and a corrections officer were killed and 13 corrections officers were held hostage during that riot, which was the longest fatal prison siege in U.S. history.

Tungate, who was then unemployed, except for his part-time National Guard service, applied for, and got, a job as a corrections officer.

He worked at the Madison Correctional Institution in London, Ohio, before joining OSP upon its opening in 1998.

With a staff of 327, including 217 corrections officers, OSP is known as the Supermax prison. It houses 447 inmates, most of them at the maximum-security level.

Read more of his story in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.