No charges have been filed yet in the killing of a prison guard last week.
By Associated Press
Published June 20, 2003
TALLAHASSEE - The warden at Charlotte Correctional Institution resigned Thursday in the wake of last week's slaying of a prison guard during an escape attempt.
Warren Cornell, in charge at the high-security prison since 1997, resigned and announced his retirement as the inquiry into the slaying of correctional officer Darla Lathrem continues, the Department of Corrections said.
Charges have yet to be filed in the June 11 incident, in which Lathrem, 38, was alone supervising five inmates on a construction detail when some of them tried to escape. She was killed. Two inmates were injured, one fatally.
"Clearly, according to our policy, there should have been two correctional officers supervising the work squad the night of Officer Lathrem's death," DOC Secretary James Crosby Jr. said.
Don Gladish, warden at Marion Correctional Institution, was named the new chief at Charlotte.
Authorities still aren't talking about the details of how Lathrem died, although Gov. Jeb Bush said last week that she "was brutally murdered with a sledgehammer."
Of the two inmates injured in the escape attempt, Charles Fuston died and the other remains hospitalized.
A fourth inmate, convicted murderer Dwight Eaglin, was captured after he used a makeshift ladder to scale an inner perimeter fence. The fifth was captured in a dormitory room.
The News-Press in Fort Myers reported Thursday that the other injured inmate is John Beaston, 37, who in 1998 drove a stolen semitrailer truck cab through several security fences and into the Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami-Dade County to break out a friend's son.
Once inside, he pulled out a shotgun and started firing and threw a firearm to inmate Jay Sigler. The pair then fled in a car driven by Sigler's mother, Sandra Sigler. They were captured the next day after they crashed, killing another driver, when they thought they had been spotted by police.
Beaston was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was due for release in 2007.
