6 Charged in Beating of Fellow Inmate

Six men have been charged in the severe beating of an inmate during last week’s racially charged riots at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, the district attorney’s office said Wednesday.

In the first criminal charges to arise from three days of chaos that left more than 80 inmates injured, authorities said the six Latino inmates attacked a 21-year-old black man April 26, slamming his head into a concrete floor and fracturing his skull.

He remains in critical condition on life support, said Cmdr. Steve Day of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The six suspects face charges of attempted murder and mayhem, authorities said. They were allegedly acting in concert with other Latino inmates to attack African Americans, whom Latinos outnumber at the facility by 2 to 1.

Many of the attacks were caught on dormitory video cameras, and sheriff’s officials said they are planning to press more charges.

“We’re looking at all the serious incidents and plan to follow this up,” said Assistant Sheriff Dennis Dahlman.

Charges were filed against Ramon Brizuela, 26; Johnny Contreras, 30; Carlos Roberto Robledo, 19; Jesus Alberto Fonseca, 23; Antonio Cruz, 18; and Jose Juan Campos, 24. Robledo is also being charged with using a shank to stab the victim, Ahmad Burwell.

After last week’s fighting, authorities took the unusual step of segregating the dorms by race. But they say they don’t have the resources or the space to permanently segregate inmates and plan to re-integrate the dorms next week.

How to better protect African American inmates and soothe tensions at Pitchess was the focus of a meeting Wednesday at departmental headquarters between top sheriff’s officials and advocates for black jail inmates.

The officials agreed to redouble efforts to prevent African Americans from getting attacked in jail.

The meeting was attended by Dahlman, Sheriff’s Department Chief Taylor Moorehead, community activists Melvin Farmer and Najee Ali, and the mother of a recently injured inmate.

Both officials and advocates called the hourlong gathering productive.

“We don’t disagree with [activists] that we need racial balance,” Dahlman said. “And we’re going to take another hard look at how to balance the dorms.”

He agreed to let the activists visit the Pitchess compound, which houses 10,000 inmates, later this week and to meet with them again if problems arise.

“They seem to really want to work with us to get things back under control,” Ali said.

Still, he voiced concerns about plans to re-integrate the dorms.

Evelyn Womack, whose son was stabbed in the back last week during a jail fight, said Wednesday’s meeting was encouraging. On Tuesday, she and half a dozen other mothers spoke out against jail conditions at a news conference outside the Men’s Central Jail downtown.

“I felt hope in my heart that these men were going to try to straighten things out,” Womack said after the meeting. “I know things are hard, that there are a lot of bad people in jail, but many of these boys don’t want to keep fighting.”