Barbara Kubik wants to know how her son died and why officers had to shoot him during last month’s riot at the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence.
But she’s having trouble getting answers from prison officials about the circumstances surrounding the death of her 40-year-old son, Brian Scott Kubik.
“I think they want the public to believe it was justified,” she said. “But I don’t see how it justifies a killing. . . . Why not shoot them in the leg?”
Guards in three towers at the prison fired every round of lethal and nonlethal ammunition at their disposal to stop the 12:30 p.m. fight on April 20. The disturbance started when a white-supremacist prison gang taunted black inmates on Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
Kubik, who was white, and 41-year-old Phillip Lee Hooker, who was black, were each killed by a single shot to the chest.
Five other inmates were injured and taken to hospitals, but authorities won’t say whether those inmates got hurt by fighting or by gunshots fired by guards.
The five injured prisoners have returned to the penitentiary, said prison spokeswoman Leann LaRiva.
The prison is conducting its own investigation into the riot and the penitentiary remains on lockdown, LaRiva said.
Barbara Kubik, who lives in Oregon, said the Fremont County coroner, Dorothy Twellman, told her that she viewed a video of the riot and Kubik’s son was shot after he ran across the yard to join a group that was engaged in a fight.
“I guess it just breaks my heart that he went running across the yard from there and he was the one,” she said. “But I guess somebody has to be the one.”
She is trying to understand why guards picked out her son for a fatal shot to the chest while, she says, the video shows other inmates’ feet were targeted.
Barbara Kubik says she was told the video shows Hooker was shot first and then her son was killed. Twellman did not return calls for comment, and the tape has not been publicly released.
“It almost seems to me they were trying to send a message to those gangs in there,” she said. “They took out one black and one white.”
Kubik had a lengthy criminal record in Oregon, and his mother concedes that he was in trouble from the time he was a teen. But she says the crimes he committed never involved gangs or physical harm to another person.
“He is not a white supremacist, but I don’t know what happens in prison,” Kubik said. “From what I hear, when you are in high security, you are friends with whoever you have to be friends with to survive.”
Brian Kubik was serving a 15-year prison term for being a felon in possession of a firearm. About a year ago, he had been transferred from a federal prison in Phoenix.
When she first got the call about her son’s death, Kubik says she was told he was stabbed, not shot.
She learned the truth when her brother, who has Internet access, called her and said he read that the guards had shot him.
Although the investigation is ongoing, authorities have said the inmates used homemade weapons and rocks during the fight and it involved about 150 to 200 prisoners.
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar sent a letter to the Justice Department asking for an independent investigation by the Government Accountability Office and also renewed a years-long request that staffing levels be reviewed and improved at the complex.
Salazar’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Valencia, said the Bureau of Prisons is expected to complete its investigation in a few weeks and the GAO inquiry will follow.
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
