Prison Riot Photos Show Booby Traps, Weapons

Article taken from The , January 23, 1994

COLUMBUS (AP) - Prisoners at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility armed themselves with homemade explosives and baseball bats and set booby traps to fend off intruders during the 11-day siege at the Lucasville prison in April.

State Highway Patrol investigators found dozens of homemade weapons as they examined cellblock L after the riot which one guard and nine prisoners died.

Law students at the Ohio State University were shown about 70 photographs last week that the patrol and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction took, the Columbus Dispatch reported Saturday.

Some of the photographs showed weapons such as a bloodied baseball bat, a baseball bat with gashes in it and a horseshoe, the newspaper said. Prisoners also used pieces of their beds.
Former hostages have said inmates used bats and weights to assault them.

Prisoners put the tips of matches into tubes to make explosives, then rigged them to lok like sticks of dynamite, Col. Thomas Rice said during the slide presentation to the students.

The prisoners also rigged up several booby traps, the newspaper reported.

In one photograph, a metal lockbox which inmates used to store personal belongings was strung up above a door. The box was rigged to drop from above the second floor to the first floor.