Ronald Gene Ingram
Florida Department of Corrections
A man who died during a violent transfer to a Florida prison last week was housed in the inpatient mental health building at the Dade Correctional Institution for inmates, and was beaten by officers somewhere on prison property. before being taken away in a transport vehicle, where he would not be pronounced dead until hours later and hundreds of kilometers away.
Although he died more than a week ago, the Florida Department of Corrections and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have not yet identified the inmate, only acknowledging the death after an inquiry from the Miami Herald. The Herald has since independently confirmed that his name was Ronald Gene Ingram, a 60-year-old man from Hillsborough County who was convicted of first-degree murder in 1986.
The fact that Ingram was housed in the “transitional care unit” or TCU, and the silence from authorities after his death, echoed the 2012 death of Darren Rainey, a mentally ill inmate who I was locked in a hot and impromptu shower in the same mental health ward for one to two hours, begging to be let out, according to TCU inmates, who said the shower was used to torment inmates. Rainey collapsed to his death as the water ripped the skin off his corpse.
The Department of Corrections vowed to reform the TCU at Dade CI and others like it after a Herald investigation documented Rainey’s death and other examples of cruel treatment of inmates at TCU, including serving inmates “air trays ” empty of food as punishment or put laxatives on them. or urine in your food. Among those measures: increased video surveillance and hiring ombudsmen to represent inmates.
Both the FDC and FDLE have refused to release information about Ingram’s death, citing an active criminal investigation. But the Herald pieced together an account of what happened based on public records and interviews with various prison employees, inmates, law enforcement sources and others familiar with the investigation.
Ingram was listed as released from Dade Correctional and deceased in recent weeks on the FDC website. The District 5 and 24 Medical Examiner’s Office in Leesburg, Florida, confirmed it was handling Ingram’s autopsy.
Although the Herald confirmed that Ingram was housed at TCU through unofficial sources, it is unclear exactly where in the Dade Correctional Facility he was hit. Multiple sources said the beatings took place at the port of exit, a fortified point of entry and exit from the prison. It’s also unclear whether the beating occurred on or off camera, but Ingram was said to be visibly injured before he was placed in the transport vehicle.
The motive behind Ingram’s beating was not immediately clear, although a police source said he confronted officers by throwing a cup of urine. Sources said the beating was first reported by other Dade corrections officers who passed on the information to a different FDC institution out of fear it would be covered up if reported internally at Dade CI.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is in charge of the investigation, declined to share or confirm any details, saying only that it is investigating the death of an inmate and that the “case is active.”
In response to Ingram’s fatal beating last week, the Department of Corrections has placed 10 of its officers on furlough. An officer has resigned. But the agency did not disclose anything about the death until after an investigation by the Herald on Friday of last week.
The next morning, on Saturday, five days after Ingram’s beating, the FDC issued a press release titled “statement on inmate death” that contained few details about what happened and did not name Ingram.
In the days since the news release, the Florida Department of Corrections has refused to provide additional information, including the ranks of the officers it placed on leave, saying only that they were “of various ranks.” However, the agency clarified that all of the officers placed on leave worked at Dade CI.
Although the department’s weekend press release mentioned that Dade CI’s director had been “recently replaced,” it did not say where the previous director went. In response to subsequent questions from the Herald, the department revealed that the former director had been transferred to Sumter Correctional, west of Orlando, where he is an assistant to the director. Dade CI has had three guardians in the past five years, the FDC said.
The FDC declined to make its new secretary, agency veteran Ricky Dixon, available for an interview, saying it “will not provide an interview on an open and active FDLE criminal case at this time.”
Although the Herald requested a record detailing Ingram’s housing and disciplinary history on Monday morning, the FDC had not provided it as of Wednesday afternoon, even though it routinely honors such requests for other inmates in question. hours.
Mortality records dating back to August 2016 show that there have been 99 deaths at Dade Correctional since then. Because the records are updated only periodically, they don’t include recent deaths in recent weeks, such as Ingram’s.
The vast majority of those deaths have been declared “natural” by the department and outside agencies like FDLE, though inmates in the Florida system often question the validity of those determinations, saying drug overdoses and even Violent deaths are covered up. by the authorities.
A former Dade Correctional inmate, who was still on parole and asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, said he visited the TCU even though he was not housed there.
“The officers that work there … it’s just entertainment for them,” he said. “You went there to pick up the clothes and… you see people standing behind the bloody door, black-eyed and beaten. They are looking at you and they are afraid to say something. And if you’re a prisoner, there’s no one to say anything to.”
Dade Correctional and its TCU became infamous in 2014 when Rainey’s death was revealed two years after the fact in a series of Miami Herald articles. Rainey was serving a short sentence for possession of cocaine. After he smeared feces on the walls of his cell, prison officers put him through the standard showers and placed him in a closet, equipped with a shower faucet, whose temperature controls were located in an adjoining room.
The officers turned on the hot water and left him inside the locked cabinet for between one and two hours. Six inmates told investigators that he screamed for mercy, though years later the official investigation questioned his credibility. When officers found him, collapsed in a puddle of water, skin had shed from much of Rainey’s body.
No one has been charged with a crime in Rainey’s death. A report released years later by the office of Miami-Dade attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the 50-year-old Rainey’s death was an accident, the result of complications from his mental illness, a heart condition and “confinement in a shower”. ”
The warden and clerk of the prison system were replaced in the wake of Rainey’s revelations.
Bennie Lazzara, a Tampa criminal defense attorney who represented Ingram at trial, said his former client had severe mental health disabilities and came from a poor family in rural Hillsborough County.
“I wouldn’t even say he had the mentality of a teenager, based on my conversations with him, he was like a child,” Lazzara said. “The psychiatrist I called at the trial testified that he didn’t know right from wrong.”
Ingram was found guilty of fatally shooting a woman with whom he had previously been in a relationship, using an automatic weapon allegedly inspired by the 1982 Rambo film “First Blood.” A judge in his case ruled out the death penalty. because of the evidence. presented at trial about his mental health problems, according to his attorney.
Lazzara said he was not aware that Ingram had any siblings or other relatives besides his parents, who were elderly at the time of his sentencing.
The Herald was unsuccessful in its efforts to reach Ingram’s friends or family.
Miami Herald reporters Julie K. Brown and David Ovalle contributed to this article.
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 17:36.
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