ATLANTA (AP) — Fighting that broke out at a Georgia state prison over the weekend left three inmates dead and injured a corrections officer and 13 more inmates, the Georgia Department of Corrections said Monday.
The agency said the violence erupted in an outdoor area of the medium-security Washington State Prison, and that guards used non-lethal weapons to subdue the fighting. It said the situation was under control within about 90 minutes. Visitors were safely evacuated after some injured inmates entered the prison's visitation area, the statement said.
The agency said it believes the episode was “gang-affiliated” but gave few details about what happened, including how the three prisoners died. A Department of Corrections spokesperson did not immediately return phone, email and text messages seeking further information Monday.
Video posted to social media showed at least 20 inmates running along an outdoor walkway enclosed by security fencing. Some of the inmates appeared to be holding clubs or other makeshift weapons. The footage was posted by the Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia, which advocates for prisoner rights. The group said the footage came from an inmate.
The coalition posted another video showing fighting that it said was recorded Dec. 13 at Washington State Prison, which has a capacity of about 1,550 inmates and is located about 130 miles (210 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, according to the Department of Corrections website.
“It’s like they’re just letting them run around, do whatever,” said Michelle Lett, who told The Associated Press her nephew was among the inmates killed. “They weren’t trying to stop nothing. They were just running free in the prison.”
Lett said her nephew, 42-year-old Jimmy Lee Trammell, had been transferred to Washington State Prison recently ahead of his scheduled release Wednesday. She said a warden called Trammell's brother late Sunday to tell him that Trammell had been fatally stabbed in a fight. Unofficial word of his death had already reached the family from an inmate with a contraband cellphone, Lett said.
The Department of Corrections confirmed Trammell's death in its statement Monday, which said he was serving a 20-year sentence for burglary. Also killed were Ahmod Dewayne Hatcher, 23; and Teddy Dewayne Jackson, 27. The agency said both Hatcher and Jackson had been convicted of aggravated assault.
The violence was “predictable” considering Department of Corrections records indicate Washington State Prison has been badly understaffed, said Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, which advocates for better prisons with fewer inmates. She cited July figures showing that 72% of staff positions authorized for Washington State Prison were vacant.
“Unfortunately, we are in a state of normalized crisis,” Hollie said.
While fights break out at U.S. prisons daily, it’s rare to see violence that results in multiple deaths and so many people hurt, said Bryce Peterson, who studies corrections for the Center for Naval Analyses’ Center for Justice Research and Innovation.
“By any definition, this would fall under what we would call collective violence or a riot,” Peterson said. “This is certainly not a typical fight. This is much more serious.”
Peterson said that larger-scale prison violence typically has multiple causes, such as tension between inmate factions that erupts at an understaffed prison where guards struggle to contain the violence. He said the fact that people died at Washington State suggests some inmates had weapons.
“There’s usually protections in place that failed or broke down and led to this kind of incident,” Peterson said.
The fight came less than two years after a 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Justice said Georgia prison officials were “deliberately indifferent” to unchecked deadly violence, widespread drug use, extortion and sexual abuse at state lockups.
The report, which followed a civil rights investigation, found sophisticated gangs run prison black markets trafficking in drugs, weapons and electronic devices such as drones and smartphones. Investigators also cited a rising number of homicides in Georgia prisons, from seven in 2018 to 35 in 2023. Homicides later rose to 66 in 2024, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and were on pace to top in 2025 through June.
State officials denied they were violating inmates' constitutional rights at the time of the 2024 report, but Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver and others have acknowledged that the pandemic led to a staffing crisis in state prisons as many prison guards resigned. The state has pumped more than $600 million in new spending into the Department of Corrections in recent years. That has helped hire more guards, but the corrections chief told lawmakers in December that the state is still 1,000 guards short of recommended staffing levels.
State Rep. Bill Hitchens, a Republican from Rincon, said at the December hearing that he’s concerned the prison system isn’t making meaningful progress toward preventing inmates from jamming or disabling cell-door locks. Broken locks allow inmates to roam freely and commit attacks. Oliver said at the time that fully replacing cell-door locks could take years.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Washington and Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed.
This undated photo released by Georgia Department of Corrections shows Ahmod Dewayne Hatcher. (Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)
This undated photo released by Georgia Department of Corrections shows Teddy Dewayne Jackson Jr. (Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)
This undated photo released by Georgia Department of Corrections shows Jimmy Lee Trammell. (Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)
A federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as President Donald Trump seeks to shut it down.
At the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Senior Judge Royce Lamberth said the government did not explain why it could not take action short of a complete stop to construction on Revolution Wind while it considers ways to mitigate its national security concerns. He said it also did not provide sufficient reasoning for its change in position.
Revolution Wind has received all of its federal permits and is nearly 90% complete to provide power for Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Trump says his goal is to not let any “windmills” be built. Three energy developers are challenging the administration’s freeze of their offshore wind projects in the federal courts this week.
Danish energy company Orsted, Norwegian company Equinor, and Dominion Energy Virginia each sued to ask the courts to vacate and set aside the administration’s Dec. 22 order to freeze five big projects on the East Coast over national security concerns. Orsted’s hearing was first on its Revolution Wind project. Orsted said it will soon resume construction to deliver affordable, reliable power to the Northeast.
The administration did not reveal specifics about its national security concerns, but Trump said Friday while meeting with oil industry executives about investing in Venezuela that wind farms are “losers.” He said they lose money, destroy the landscape and kill birds.
“I’ve told my people we will not approve windmills,” Trump said. “Maybe we get forced to do something because some stupid person in the Biden administration agreed to do something years ago. We will not approve any windmills in this country.”
The Biden administration sought to ramp up offshore wind as a climate change solution. Trump began reversing the country’s energy policies his first day in office with a spate of executive orders aimed at boosting oil, gas and coal. A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
The Trump administration paused leases for the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and two projects in New York: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind. New York’s attorney general sued the Trump administration on Friday over Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind.
Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind are both major offshore wind projects by Orsted. Rhode Island and Connecticut filed their own request in court to try to save Revolution Wind.
“The law takes precedent over the political whims of one man, and we will continue to fight to make sure that remains the case,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said in a statement.
At Monday's hearing, attorney Janice Schneider, representing Revolution Wind, said the stop work order came at a critical stage of construction, with the project nearly 90% built and weeks away from beginning to deliver power to the electric grid. She said the delay is costing more than $1.4 million per day, and a specialized vessel has just enough time now to install the remaining turbines before its contract is up at the site in February.
Schneider said they take national security issues seriously, but the government has not shared more information about its concerns with their experts who have security clearances, or shared unclassified summaries.
“We do think that this court should be very skeptical of the government’s true motives here," Schneider said, citing Trump's comments from Friday.
Department of Justice attorney Peter Torstensen argued that national security is paramount and protecting against new risks identified in the classified materials outweighs any alleged irreparable harm to the developers.
Work on the Revolution Wind project was previously paused on Aug. 22 for what the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said were national security concerns. A month later, Judge Lamberth ruled the project could resume, citing the irreparable harm to the developers and the demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of their claim. Orsted is building it with Skyborn Renewables.
With four offshore wind projects still stalled, Hillary Bright, executive director of offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward, said she's hopeful that they will prevail in court and that the administration will begin to understand "the immense benefits that these nearly complete power sources can bring to our nation’s energy and national security.”
Equinor owns Empire Wind. Its limited liability company, Empire Wind LLC, said the project faces “likely termination” if construction can’t resume by this Friday because the order disrupts a tightly choreographed construction schedule dependent on vessels with very limited availability. Its hearing is Wednesday.
“I would like to think that offshore wind is, and will continue to be, part of an all-of-the-above energy solution, which our country desperately needs,” said Molly Morris, Equinor’s senior vice president overseeing Empire Wind.
Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, was the first to sue. It’s asking a judge to block the order, calling it “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional. Its hearing is Friday.
Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
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FILE - Wind turbine bases, generators and blades sit at The Portsmouth Marine terminal that is the staging area for Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Dec. 22, 2025, in Portsmouth, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
FILE - A sign for the company Equinor is displayed on Oct. 28, 2020, in Fornebu, Norway. (Håkon Mosvold Larsen/NTB Scanpix via AP, File)
FILE - The logo for the Danish company Orsted is displayed on the exterior of the Avedore Power Station in Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Aug. 19, 2025. (Sebastian Elias Uth/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
FILE - Wind turbine bases, generators and blades sit along with support ships at The Portsmouth Marine terminal that is the staging area for Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Dec. 22, 2025, in Portsmouth, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
