GUARD DIES AMID REIGN OF TERROR IN VIRGINIA PRISONS; WAVE OF OFFICIAL VIOLENCE FOLLOWS (2025)

Since Nov 17, 2025 Virgina’s media has been awash with reports that on that day a guard in the state’s River North Correctional (sic!) Center was stabbed to death by a prisoner. Two other guards were reported as also injured during the altercation. Officials have been silent, however, about circumstances surrounding the incident.

What IS known, but unspoken, is that River North is among several remote Virginia prisons that have, for over a year, been at the forefront of growing public protests and demands to shut down these prisons and fire the prison system’s top administrators, for a culture of extreme abuses of prisoners and administrative coverups. In fact, it was at River North that a prisoner, Walter Kissee, was crippled in a gruesome attack by a mob of guards and K-9, where a softball-sized chunk of muscle was ripped from his leg, as he lay on the ground restrained and unresisting.

These abuses are what prompted the creation of UPROAR (Uniting Prisoners’ Relatives Organizing Against Repression), a prisoner support group composed largely of the loved ones of people abused in Va’s prisons. UPROAR has been a driving force in these protests and demands. Yet, amid this public outcry, officials have done NOTHING to rein in these abuses.

Indeed, Va prison officials have instituted group punishment, in efforts to drive prisoners to violently police each other to compensate for staff shortages and trying to suppress prisoners driven to such desperate acts as setting themselves on fire in efforts to be removed from these prisons. It was under this reign of official violence and terror that the guard, Jeremy Hall, was slain – desperate situation and predictable outcome that officials themselves created.

In fact, the spokesman for the National Coalition for Public Safety Officers, that represents over 1000 Va guards, released a public statement on Nov 20, 2025 blaming the same top Va prison administrators that UPROAR has led demands to fire, for creating the conditions inside Va’s prisons which led to Hall’s death.

Indeed, during his brief tenure in the VADOC Hall developed a reputation as one of the most abusive guards at River North. He was known to have shot numerous prisoners in their faces with guns stationed in the prison’s cellblocks, abusing the disciplinary system he wrote over 60 infractions against prisoners, he was routinely verbally abusive, and threatening and violent towards prisoners, and spread trauma across the prisoner population at River North. Again, nothing was done in response to the culture of abuse that pervades Va’s remote prisons like River North, which created, encouraged and protected guards like Hall. A desperate reaction was inevitable.

What has now followed Hall’s death is a deepening of the reign of terror, with officials engaging a wave of retaliatory violence against random prisoners in these prisons. These retaliations began with the transfer and repeated electrocution of the husband of a member of UPROAR, after he witnessed the brutal beating and stomping by a mob of guards of John Russell, the prisoner alleged to have slain Hall, on the morning of Nov 17, 2025.

The witness, Kenneth Evans, husband of UPROAR member Melinda Evans, observed River North guards beat Russell at length in a “blind spot” outside his cellblock as he was using a wall mounted telephone.

When Kenneth made calls to loved ones, including Melinda, he was targeted two days later by guards with VADOC’s notorious Strike Force or SRT (Special Response Team) group, a team mobilized by the prison system’s top administrators, who transferred him to Red Onion State Prison, and electrocuted him repeatedly with a 70,000 volt stun belt until he was unconscious, then shocked him again once he regained consciousness.

Kenneth’s emergency transfer, conducted without any notice or hearing, violated VADOC transfer policy. Upon arrival at Red Onion, he was placed in a cell smeared with feces and blood, with no bedding, toilet paper, soap or anything to clean himself or the cell with for two days. He was denied medical care. The cell was cleaned and he moved only after UPROAR was informed of and protested his situation.

The attack on Kenneth was only the beginning, however.

Following his transfer and tortured electrocution, reports have come from across the VADOC to UPROAR that individual and groups of prisoners and entire cellblocks have been targeted for random beatings by VADOC guards and Strike Force groups. Prisoners are being assaulted, thrown in solitary, subjected to abusive lockdown conditions, and transferred to Va’s remote prisons in stated retaliation for Hall’s death.

Even VADOC staff have gone online stating that guards are in open rebellion. But not rebellion against administrators, however, but rather against the powerless prisoners. It is yet another round and escalation of group punishment in an out-of-control and unaccountable prison system run by a closed circle of abusers, under policies of favoritism, nepotism and racism. A closed circle that must be exposed and broken.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!