Aquinas Stillwell was prepared for his youngest brother to be released from prison Wednesday.
Jimmy Trammell, 42, had spent the past decade behind bars. The brothers were going to meet up at a Greyhound bus stop in Atlanta in three days.
But Stillwell got a call Sunday night that shattered those plans.
The Washington State Prison warden told him his brother “had been in an altercation and unfortunately lost his life,” Stillwell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
“My emotions are so up and down right now, like I can cry, and then, I’m angry,” Stillwell said, holding back tears. “(He) lost his life three days before — he was 72 hours left in this prison, and I need answers.”
Credit: Aquinas Stillwell
Credit: Aquinas Stillwell
Two other inmates, Teddy Jackson and Ahmod Hatcher, were also killed in Sunday’s incident at the Middle Georgia prison, and 13 inmates were taken to hospitals with injuries. The AJC could not immediately reach the other families for comment.
A guard sustained injuries that were not life-threatening during the altercation, which started among several inmates on a sidewalk and spilled into a visitation area of the prison around 1:25 p.m., according to a statement released late Monday afternoon by the Georgia Department of Corrections. Prison staff used nonlethal weapons and regained control of the facility by 3 p.m., the GDC confirmed. The prison remained on lockdown Monday.
The GDC is investigating the incident, which it believes to be gang-affiliated. The violence is the latest in a string of serious problems that have plagued the state’s prison system and spurred calls for reform.
Washington County Sheriff Joel Cochran said his office was asked Sunday to help secure the outside of the prison while state corrections officers handled the situation inside. By 6 p.m., the GDC told the sheriff’s office the facility had been secured.
The medium-security prison, constructed in 1991, is in Davisboro, about 130 miles southeast of Atlanta between Macon and Augusta. It is overseen by the GDC and has the capacity to house more than 1,500 inmates.
Homicides inside Georgia’s prisons have been rising dramatically in recent years, according to an AJC investigation that used public death records, coroner’s reports and autopsy reports, along with death information from the GDC.
For 2024, the GDC said it investigated 66 prisoner deaths that were suspected homicides. That figure greatly exceeded 2023’s record of at least 38 killings. The agency has not revealed how many deaths it investigated as homicides last year.
In 2017, there were just eight homicides in state prisons, and in 2018, there were nine, the GDC said.
Consultants hired for a yearlong study in June 2024 by Gov. Brian Kemp found that buildings with maintenance issues enabled prisoners to strip off materials from walls and ceilings to make weapons. They could also easily leave cells because the locks didn’t work.
Understaffing meant there often were no officers around to monitor the movements, the consultants reported, and officers working alone reported being fearful of retribution if they enforced the rules, the AJC reported.
A scathing report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2024 described violence, sexual assaults and gang-run prisons in Georgia, fueled by a culture of indifference.
Top Georgia lawmakers acknowledged last year costly steps needed to repair the state’s prisons and allocated more than $600 million in new funding to the department to add staffing positions, improve salaries and tackle a backlog of maintenance projects, including repairing locks.
“We can throw as much money at this problem as we want, but as long as we are sending so many people to prison for long periods of time, we are going to see this type of violence,” Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director of the Atlanta-based nonprofit Southern Center for Human Rights, said.
Trammell had been incarcerated since 2016 on a first-degree burglary conviction, according to GDC inmate information. His release date was set for Wednesday. He had another 10 years left on probation.
Hatcher, 23, began serving a 20-year sentence in November 2024 after his conviction in Richmond County on several charges, including aggravated assault, theft, obstruction and possession of cocaine, according to the GDC. He was also convicted of mutiny in a penal institution for a 2023 incident, records show.
Jackson, 27, was in the process of serving 10 years after being convicted of aggravated assault in Bibb County, the GDC said. His maximum release date was July 2028. Jackson would have celebrated his birthday Thursday.
Stillwell intended for his brother to live with him and help with his landscaping business. Now, their family is left clamoring for information about what happened and how to bring Trammell’s body home to Atlanta.
“They need to give me answers on why my brother’s dead,” he said.
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