4 guards at SW Indiana prison face battery charges

CARLISLE, Ind. (AP) - Four guards fired from a southwestern Indiana prison face felony battery counts for allegedly beating two inmates in an incident in which a fifth guard died of a heart attack, authorities said Thursday.

In a statement, the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility said Sullivan County prosecutors issued arrest warrants Thursday afternoon charging Thomas Kaiser, 27, of Greene County; Bradley Keller, 30, and Marty Getchell, 47, both of Sullivan County; and Derek Werden, 32, of Daviess County.

The Sullivan County Jail said Keller was released after posting 10 percent of his $15,000 bond. It was not holding any of the other three men Thursday night. A phone call to Werden's home rang unanswered, and published numbers for the other three could not be located.

Each of the four faced preliminary charges of battery resulting in serious bodily injury, the prison said. All have been fired by the prison.

Prison spokesmen Rick Larsen said moments after a fight broken out in a housing unit, Werden used unnecessary force against inmate Jamour Maxieson.

Afterward, while guards were taking Maxieson and a second inmate, Anthony Spearman, to segregation units, one of the guards escorting Maxieson, 51-year-old Timothy Betts of Jasonville, collapsed from a heart attack. He died later at a hospital.

Investigators said Keller, Getchell and Kaiser saw Betts receiving emergency care shortly thereafter and assaulted Spearman while escorting him to his unit, Larsen said.

Spearman, 21, was treated for eye socket and related injuries, Larsen said. Maxieson, 21, was treated at the infirmary of the prison located 35 miles south of Terre Haute.

Both have been transferred to the Pendleton Correctional Facility, an online Department of Correction inmate locater indicated.

Indiana State Police participated in an internal investigation and turned the case over to prosecutors late last week, Larsen said.

"Correctional professionals do not use unnecessary force, ever," Prison Superintendent Richard Brown said in a statement. "The alleged actions by these officers is intolerable. They have no place in our ranks."

Spearman is serving a six-year sentence on a Marion County robbery conviction. Maxieson is serving a 12-year term on Marion County convictions for carjacking, robbery and handgun possession without a license.

It wasn't clear who was in the initial fight in the housing unit before the beatings.