Pa. guard who attended YSU, inmate take fatal plunge down elevator shaft

WILKES BARRE, Pa. (A) — A corrections officer and an inmate smashed through an elevator door during a scuffle at a Pennsylvania jail and plunged down an open shaft to their deaths, officials said Tuesday.

Luzerne County Manager David Pedri called it a "freak accident" and said an engineering firm will determine how the elevator door gave way.

Kristopher Moules, 25, a first-year corrections officer at Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Wilkes-Barre, and 27-year-old inmate Timothy D. Gilliam Jr. exchanged words, then got into a physical altercation on the fifth floor of the Luzerne County Correctional Facility on Monday night, Pedri said at a news conference in Wilkes-Barre.

"The inmate and our corrections officer smashed into the elevator door on the fifth floor. That elevator door gave way, leading to their tragic fall," he said.

Another corrections officer who was helping Moules narrowly avoided plunging down the elevator shaft, too, officials said. Moules, who played baseball and majored in criminal justice at Youngstown State University, started working as a corrections officer in September.