The Virginia Department of Corrections has finally shown its true colors. For over 26 years I have been a prisoner inside the VADOC. For that entire time I have been forced to listen to VDOC’s false narrative that their priority is to secure, not only the public by imprisoning me, and the staff of VDOC by restrictions on my movement, VDOC has also had the nerve to pretend that they have had my safety and security in mind by its own oppressive and destructive practices.
Now, in their actual practices it seems that that lie has been cast aside. Instead of that old false narrative of prisoner safety the staff here at Red Onion State Prison have finally shown me and every other prisoner here, at least those of us housed inside D2 pod, that they have abandoned all responsibility for and will play no role in any of our safety. This is now policy.
Early in 2025 a group of prisoners got into a scuffle with a group of officers at Wallen’s Ridge State Prison. It is usually a single prisoner that is being assaulted by many officers. Those officers had not been trained to participate in an altercation with fair numbers, so those officers lost that fight. That fight happened at Wallen’s Ridge State Prison, not Red Onion State Prison.
Then, in November of 2025, some officers at River North Correctional Center, who were assaulting a prisoner, lost that fight also, even though there were three officers against one prisoner. Two officers were injured and one officer died. Again, this was at River North Correctional Center, not Red Onion State Prison.
Yet, after the incident at Wallen’s Ridge, then again at River North, the staff here at Red Onion did escalate their oppressive tactics. From drawing arbitrary lines on the floor that, if crossed or sometimes just approached, a prisoner will be shot without a warning, often without any obvious reasonable justification. To taking away televisions, tablets, commissary, library access, all out of cell activities… basically isolating two men in one cell for 24 hours per day for months on end for no action taken by those two men. All for something that happened somewhere else.
Now, the staff here at Red Onion State Prison(ROSP), have adopted a new policy where employees will not enter a pod when prisoners are outside of their cells in the pod.
This was evidenced on January 24, 2026 when the staff at Red Onion State Prison, in the mountains of southwest Virginia, stood outside of D2 pod’s front door and watched through the plexiglass window, for approximately 10 minutes, while a man assaulted another man with a weapon.
At the time of this incident the top tier had already been allowed out of their cells for in pod recreation for an hour. In pod recreation is when we prisoners are allowed out of our cells in mass to use the telephone, use the one kiosk, take showers and generally be together as a prison population. I am housed on the top tier of D2 pod so I had been allowed out of my own cell to quickly send and download my emails, make a phone call, download the daily AP newspaper, take a shower and all within the one hour that I was afforded to do all these things on this day. Before 10 am I had been locked back inside my cell so that the bottom tier could come out for their in-pod recreation. Top and bottom tier are not allowed out together.
The bottom tier of D2 pod was then allowed out for in pod recreation. 15 plus prisoners were allowed out of their cells to go about the few tasks allowed by ROSP. The vast majority of prisoners move in an orderly fashion to ensure that they can get their meager affairs tended to in their allowed hour. Men phone loved ones, download overpriced music and purchase stamps at the kiosk, others will shower or wait their turn at these same few options.
At approximately 10 am while the bottom tier of D2 pod were out for their pod recreation a prisoner assaulted another prisoner with a weapon. The prisoner who initiated the physical contact did so with a set of electric hair trimmers. The trimmers are available for any prisoner in D2 pod to use. They are heavy with a sharp blade of teeth and a long black cord. Because no prisoners inside of D2 pod are allowed to work an institutional job assignments the trimmers are left out in a box on the floor for anyone to pick up and use as they see fit. At all other prisons the trimmers would have been restricted to the prisoner with the pod barber job assignment and thus not available for anyone to grab at random.
For around 10 minutes, starting at approximately 10 o’clock the ROSP security officer who stood safely in the raised booth that overlooks D2 pod shot thick, hard plastic projectiles at the fighting prisoners. He did this using a very large gun that resembles a grenade launcher. He stopped to reload his weapon many times.
The gun used here at ROSP is notorious for causing serious harm to prisoners’ bodies. It shoots fist sized projectiles that break bone and split skin. Anyone directly hit by one of the projectiles is guaranteed to wear a large bruise where the projectile hits them no matter how far away they are when shot. If that is not enough to terrify whoever an officer chooses to menace from the safety of the raised booth, then the hard plastic projectiles many sharp pieces flying in all directions from its impact should do it.
This is because the heavy plastic projectiles that are shot at prisoners move at such a high rate of speed that they break into shards and pieces on contact, even when they hit human flesh. The shards that fly away from that impact leave bruises and cuts on those that are hit from incidental contact and even ricochets. Quarter sized shards of hardened plastic ricochet off of walls and floors ensuring that everyone in the vicinity of its impact receives some level of assault no matter their involvement in the incident or not.
This is VDOC’s opinion of safety. Allow prisoners to assault each other while the entire pod gets papered with plastic fist sized bullets and shards of flying plastic. And just in case a prisoner is not touched by a direct hit of a fist sized hard plastic bullet or the flying chunks of its disintegrating body bouncing off the stone floor, walls, tables and people, there is still one more chance for a prisoner to suffer due to no fault of his own.
Inside of every hard plastic bullet projectile there is a green powder that is released in a puff of chalky dust when it shatters. The hard plastic bullet shot from the safety of the raised booth, down indiscriminately towards prisoners, hold a green powder that burns the skin, eyes, nose and when inhaled chokes and burns the throat and lungs. And there is a large quantity of this poison dust inside those bullets.
While this assault with a weapon was going on, while the officer safely inside the raised booth rained plastic pain and green powder poison across everyone trapped in D2 pod, officers watched from the safety of the sally port, outside of D2 pod’s front entrance, in plane sight of everyone, watching the fight proceed. They stood at the locked door and watched through the plexiglass window as a mans life was threatened by another prisoner who assaulted him with a weapon. The sound of barking dogs was heard throughout the entire fight/assault.
Apparently a prisoner’s safety is not worth an attack dogs safety to the staff of ROSP. Those barking dogs were kept safely outside of the front entrance while a man’s life was threatened by a convicted felon with a weapon.
When a fight breaks out at Red Onion State Prison, or when an officer says so for any reason all prisoners are expected to immediately drop to the ground, wherever they are at that moment. They are expected to lay on their stomachs with their hands on the backs of their heads. So that the officers who enter the area to intervene will not mistake those who are doing nothing from those it deems a threat. But that only makes sense when officers will enter the area to secure the safety of those prone, obedient prisoners.
On January 24, 2026, when one man attacked another with a weapon, the officer in the raised booth did yell for everyone to get on the floor. He screamed this many times. He did this while continuously firing plastic bullets filled with green poison. He yelled this at the two men locked in mortal combat. Everyone in D2 pod lay down except for the assailant and his target.
The two men scuffled in their mutual combat they moved around, a lot.
For those on the floor who tried to crawl away from the area where the fight was raging, the same area where the officer in the raised both was continually firing, those prisoners were also shot for trying to move away from the dangerous prisoner and the officers line of fire. The same prisoners who were left to fend for themselves in a dangerous situation, the same prisoners who were told that no officer would enter the pod to save them from a convicted felon, who was in the act of assaulting another man with a weapon, were expected to lay at that same convicted felon’s feet, while the officer, who was safe, high in his raised booth, shot projectiles filled with poison down to hit them and\or blanket them in a stiffing layer of green choking dust. Those same prisoners were expected to lay still and take the missed plastic bullets to their backs and head. They were expected to lay still and wait for a convicted felon in the act of assault with a weapon to decide on who next to assault with his weapon, under threat of being shot for not allowing that out of control prison his choice of next victims.
Also the officer in the booth was a horrible shot.
A prisoner is actually expected to lay still while waiting to be assaulted by a prisoner with a weapon and an officer with a bad aim firing plastic bullets at the same time, all while wearing a layer of poison while choking, gagging, burning all for actions totally out of their control.
Because the rules say so.
When the prisoner with the weapon was done assaulting the other prisoner, when he had done what damage he decided to inflict, he decided, on his own, to stop and lay down on the floor, in a rapidly widening pile of poison green dust.
Then, and only then, did the front door to D2 pod open. Officers came rushing in, screaming, stomping, using the f-word every other breath, suddenly, aggressively, into the pod stirring up a pile of green poison into the eyes and noses of the 15 plus obedient prisoner who were already laying, choking, sneezing, gagging, coughing on the floor. They rushed in but only after a prisoner with a weapon was given all opportunity to inflict maximum damage to another prisoner.
The officers also brought in the dogs.
Their dogs barked constantly, snarled and clapped their teeth at the prone figures laying on the floor choking. These prisoners were fresh from the fear of getting shot in the back of the head into the fear of getting mauled by a vicious attack dog if they flinch away from the dog barking poison into their faces.
When the two prisoners who were physically involve in the assault were handcuffed and led away, then all the obedient prisoners were allowed to stand one by one and return to their cells. They took their clothes covered in green poison into their cells.
When all was said and done the green dust covered a twenty-foot square patch of floor at the front of D2 pod. The stairs are at the front of the pod. The green poison covered every stair top to bottom. The green teargas covered the floor on the top tier for a length that went past five cells of prisoners who were inside of their cells the entire time that the officer was shooting. The green dust was inside those cells on top and more on the bottom tier. The green dust travels so far that after that much of it had been distributed, I was choking on it too, inside my cell. And my cell is as far away as can be. When I finally got another shower on the 27th there was green dust on the shower wall at the far end of the pod.
I cannot blame any prisoner for what happened on January 24. Not in this situation. When ROSP decided that it will not even wear the pretense of working towards a prisoner’s safety then what is a prisoner to do to insure his own survival? Does a man inside a pod at ROSP, the institution that VDOC calls its housing for the “worst of the worst” criminal population, allow himself to be murdered by a convicted murderer? Who is going to stop defending himself from assault to lay down on the floor exposing himself to his attacker because an officer tells him to from the safety of his raised booth?
And what about the attacker with his weapon? Did he feel so threatened that he found himself in need of a weapon to fend off an impending assault? Was he threatened and so in fear that a frontal assault was his best choice, his only viable option at insure he survives to see another day?
It is up to the prisoner to make these decisions now, here at Red Onion State Prison.
There are killers and rapists in this prison, alongside drug dealers and thieves, alongside addicts sentenced for being addicts and mental patients in prison instead of in inpatient mental health facilities.
In Red Onion State Prison the victims have been left to the whim of the victimizers and when one meets the other they will all be left to figure out who is who on their own.
No help is coming. No help did come.
And don’t forget that this policy is only for some prisoners here at ROSP.
D1 pod prisoners are allowed to be in the presence of officers without having to wear any restrains.
Yes, they are also murderers and rapists. Yet they are allowed to hold institutional job assignments inside and outside of their housing unit. The residents of ROSP D1 pod are allowed to come into D2 pod to do all of the job assignments that we D2 pod prisoners are not allowed to do.
There are prisoners in D1 pod who were moved from cells in D2 pod to cells in D1 pod that, have since come into D2 pod to clean and do all the things that we in D2 are not allowed to do, before returning to their cells in D1 pod.
Make that make sense.
D1 pod prisoners are allowed to participate in VDOC correctional programming, to attend religious services and they receive regular outside recreation and near uninterrupted daily pod recreation. D2 pod prisoners are restricted from all of those things far more often than not.
Question: if a prisoner housed in D1 pod attacks another D1 pod prisoner while an officer is already in the pod with them will that officer then run out of the pod and lock the door behind himself leaving those two prisoners to fight also accumulate green dust?
So don’t think that VDOC’s Red Onion State Prison is instituting policy that it has no other option than to institute. It is not instituting this policy for every prisoner here.
On January 24, 2025, it did institute this dangerous and reckless policy in D2 pod and in doing so it risked the lived of prisoners in D2 pod. All with security cameras recording and body worn cameras on staff.
So there is a record.
I chose the title “All Fights At Red Onion State Prison, In Virginia, Are Now To The Death” because the policy here of letting prisoners attack each other without any ROSP “security” staff intervention is going to end badly for someone here. But will that be enough?
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