The Colorado Inspector General’s office is investigating how an inmate at minimum security Four Mile Correctional Facility was shot in the knee while walking around a track, authorities say.
The inmate, who is serving a sentence on drug charges, was shot in the knee on Aug. 21, said Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said.
The tip of the bullet was removed from the man’s knee during surgery on Tuesday, confirming that he had been shot, Sanguinetti said. DOC has brought in correctional officers from Pueblo and other Cañon City prisons to search the prison for a gun, she said.
“They’re doing a shake down right now,” Sanguinetti said. “The facility is on lock down. This is really unique to say the least. To my knowledge it’s never happened before.”
Sanguinetti declined to name the inmate.
“They’ll look at the possibility that he was targeted. But he’s just an average Joe that happens to be in prison,” she said when asked whether the victim was a high-profile inmate that someone wanted to target.
She said the inmate was exercising during recreational time, when the yard is filled with as many as 300 inmates, pumping iron, playing team sports or jogging around the track.
No one reported witnessing anyone firing a gun or handling a gun, Sanguinetti said. The inmate suddenly felt a sharp pain in his knee and saw the wound, she said.
“Nobody knows or sees anything,” she said.
But she added that the prison culture discourages inmates from reporting violence. “Historically prisoners are reluctant to divulge information because they don’t want to be labeled as an informant.”
Investigators are considering many scenarios including that someone smuggled a gun into the prison or someone randomly fired a high-power rifle from a distant bluff.
“They are truly looking at all possibilities,” Sanguinetti said.
Correctional officers working inside the prison are not armed. Only perimeter guards carry shotguns and rifles, she said. Because Four Mile is a minimum security prison it does not have any towers overlooking the facility.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation analysts will attempt to determine whether the bullet fragments removed from the inmate’s leg came from a high-powered rifle.
Correctional officers are doing an exhaustive search of cells and the prison grounds.
They are also searching for a weapon in surrounding barns and animal pens where minimum security inmates milk dairy cows and train wild mustangs as part of prison programming.
Only inmates who care for animals, which need to be fed, milked and groomed, are allowed to work, Sanguinetti said. As usual, they are strip searched before re-entering the prison.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, or
