Amelia Waters’ son had been at South Central Correctional Facility in Wayne County, Tennessee, for less than 12 hours when a group of inmates approached him with knives.
“[They] threatened his life, stole everything he had that wasn’t attached to his body somehow, and told him that if he wanted protection he would have to get his relatives to pay,” Waters said he later told her.
The next day, the group came back. Her son called her to tell her that they were back demanding money at knifepoint, but she was on a plane at the time, so she missed the call. They eventually made contact with her son’s fiancée, Waters told the Banner, who paid three different people a total of $400. The group of other inmates then forcibly moved her son to a different cell. Later that night, Waters said, her son made a video call to her from a contraband cell phone, with a man off-camera demanding more money…