The family of an inmate killed in a riot at the federal penitentiary in Florence has waited a month without hearing from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on why he was killed.
“I would like to know why it happened,” said Lilly Williams, sister of Phillip Lee Hooker, who died in the prison courtyard April 20.
“They put him in jail for doing a wrong thing, but then they took his life.”
Hooker, 41, of Milwaukee, began serving a 25-year sentence for armed robbery on March 19, 1998. Because it was a Wisconsin state charge, he began serving his sentence in a Wisconsin state prison but was transferred to the Federal Corrections Institute-Oxford, Wis., on Jan. 9, 2001. He was transferred to the maximum security prison in Florence on March 17, 2005.
On April 20, a fight broke out among about 200 inmates just after noon. Some officials said the brawl was racially motivated because it was Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
“I was told he was stabbed,” Williams said. “In a way, it (the information) came from the prison and in a way it didn’t, if you know what I mean.
“So I called the prison, and they said they had to autopsy the body. I asked why an autopsy when they knew he had been stabbed. They never told me he had been shot. Then I talked to someone in the chapel, and he said a group of black inmates were told to lie down. My brother didn’t, so they shot him in the chest with a shotgun.”
Hooker was black. A white inmate, Brian Kubik, also was killed in the fight, allegedly shot in the chest by guards. Kubik’s family says it has the same unanswered questions.
“Then they told me I had one day after the autopsy to make arrangements for his funeral or else they would cremate the body,” Williams said. “We called, and they gave the body to the Holt Funeral Home in Cañon City.”
Holt shipped the body to the Branch Funeral Home in Chicago, which held a service and buried Hooker.
“The government paid to ship it out here, but they haven’t paid for the service, which they said they would,” said Sheila Reid, owner of Branch Funeral Home.
Leann LaRiva, spokeswoman for USP-Florence, said she couldn’t comment on the cause of death or anything else. A spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in Washington did not return phone calls.
The Fremont County coroner, who performed the autopsy, did not return phone calls.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
