Around 20 juvenile inmates break loose inside troubled Louisiana facility during ‘uprising’: sheriff’s dept

Around 20 inmates at a Louisiana juvenile detention center broke loose in an “uprising” inside the perimeter of the facility Thursday night, prompting a SWAT response, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office told Fox News Digital. 

One Office of Juvenile Justice employee and two juveniles were injured in the incident in which the inmates were able to take “control of areas inside the facility.”

“Around 9:48 pm, we received word that there was a disturbance inside the facility,” the sheriff’s department said. “Around 20 youths escaped their housing areas and took control of areas inside the facility. None were able to escape the grounds.  Around 40-50 deputies from our Patrol Division and Crisis Management Unit (SWAT) responded and were able to secure the facility by about midnight. The youths were returned to the custody of the Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ), the state agency that operates the facility.” 

The three injured people were taken to the hospital in unknown condition. 

The incident is only the latest breach at the troubled facility and comes just hours after five inmates escaped early Thursday morning through a hole in a bathroom ceiling – one of whom was still at large as of early Friday. 

Bridge City is in the New Orleans metropolitan area. 

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“There was a staffing issue,” State Senator Pat Connick, R-Marrero, told WWL-TV. “Someone was not paying attention. They got out of the gate, got out of the facility.”

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He said the facility should be shut down. 

“The facility is not designed to house inmates like these kids,” he said. 

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Before that breakout more than a dozen inmates had temporarily escaped from the facility since April 2021, including a 19-year-old who beat a female guard and locked her in a bathroom according to WWL. 

“Keep in mind these aren’t just juvenile offenders, these are violent juvenile offenders: armed robbers, murderers, rapists and this facility is a minimum-security facility,” Jefferson Parish Councilman Deano Bonano said Thursday morning. “It wasn’t designed for this.”

Connick said Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, “knows that this is a problem. Staffing is a major problem. The parole officers I understand are being brought into the jail to guard the inmates instead of being on the streets doing their work as parole officers.”