‘So Depraved and Wanton’: 22-Year-Old NY Man Endured More Than 69 Blows to the Head and Body — Then Prison Guards Met at Diner to Plot ‘Amateurish’ Cover-Up. Ten Now Face Charges
The beatings of Messiah Nantwi began in his cell March 1 at the Mid-State Correctional Facility near Utica, New York. They continued in the prison’s infirmary, as he was lying handcuffed on the floor.
Five guards allegedly participated in the assault, two of whom have been charged with murder in Nantwi’s death. Two of their supervisors, who did nothing to stop the beating, also face criminal charges.
A cover-up followed, perpetrated by four other guards, states the indictment from Onondaga County grand jury, which labeled the alleged crimes a “depraved indifference to life.” False reports were filed, a makeshift knife was planted on the victim and evidence was destroyed when they cleaned up blood in Nantwi’s room.
According to Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, Mid-State guards Jonah Levi and Caleb Blair are charged with “depraved mind murder.”
“Not an intentional murder, a murder so depraved and wanton of human life, New York allows it to rise to the level of intentional murder,” he said.
They and three others — Thomas Eck, Craig Klemick and Daniel Burger — also are charged with first-degree manslaughter. Two sergeants, Francis Chandler and David Ferrone, are charged with second-degree manslaughter, accused of doing nothing to stop the assaults while supervising.
Levi and Blair were part of an emergency response team called to Nantwi’s room to help National Guard members, according to the indictment. Guard troops had been sent in by the governor to help understaffed facilities like Mid-State during a strike by prison guards over working conditions.
Fitzpatrick said at a press conference last week that the inmate drew the National Guard members’ concern when he interfered with another inmate’s attempt to obtain medication and was resistant to a prisoner headcount.
Fitzpatrick said the situation had resolved itself by the time the response team arrived, but the correctional officers entered the room anyway after a brief conversation with the Guard members.
Nantwi’s hands were raised when the officers first entered the room. He grabbed an officer’s vest as he objected to being handcuffed, the indictment says. Several guards immediately began using fists, batons and boots to subdue him. Prosecutors say the attack intensified when Nantwi allegedly bit Blair and Eck on their hands well after the assault had begun.
None of the guards was wearing mandated bodycams, Fitzpatrick said. Others who witnessed the attack turned off their cameras or “looked the other way,” the prosecutor said.
Nantwi was unresponsive after the attack and was transported to the infirmary. But before he got there he was assaulted a second time in a stairwell, and the assault wasn’t over, the investigation determined.
After he was placed into the infirmary holding cell he was beat again, this time by Blair, assaulted again, according to court documents.
According to the indictment, Nantwi was left unattended in the holding cell and no one checked on him.
“As a result of the numerous beatings by defendants and their fellow corrections officers, incarcerated individual Messiah Nantwi died due to massive head trauma and numerous other injuries,” the indictment reads.
Fitzpatrick said the Onondaga County Medical Examiner determined that Nantwi died due to traumatic brain injuries as a result of violent blows to his head.
“As well as 69 other serious blows to his body,” he said, noting that none of the corrections officers required medical intervention.”
The morning after his death, the guards reportedly met at a local diner to develop a cover story, which Fitzpatrick characterized as “amateurish and ineffective.”
Part of the cover-up involved planting a weapon, confiscated in a unrelated incident, in Nantwi’s room, according to the indictment. Ferrone was caught discussing the weapon on a bodycam that was hanging in men’s room at the infirmary. When he spotted the camera, he “uttered an expletive,” the indictment alleges.
All of the indicted guards have pleaded not guilty. Prison officials said all 10 guards charged Wednesday have either resigned or been suspended without pay.
Six other correctional officers agreed to cooperate with the investigation, Fitzpatrick said. Two will plead guilty to felonies and four will plead guilty to misdemeanors.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered the commissioner to begin the termination process for all of the workers involved in Nantwi’s death.
Nantwi was serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to a gunfire exchange with police in 2021. He was shot multiple times, the AP reports, while the officers were uninjured.
Manhattan prosecutors say Nantwi, who was out of prison while negotiating a plea on the 2021 criminal possession charge, shot and killed Jaylen Duncan, 19, on a Harlem street in April 2023. The following evening, they say, he shot and killed 36-year-old Brandon Brunson at a Harlem smoke shop after an argument. He had yet to be prosecuted for those crimes.
After the 2023 shooting, Nantwi’s plea deal was revoked and the five-year sentence began.
Nantwi’s death followed a similar incident last year just across the street from Mid-State, at the Marcy Correctional Facility. Six guards there have pleaded not guilty in the fatal beating of inmate Robert Brooks.
Inmate advocates have complained that conditions inside New York prisons drastically deteriorated during the walkout. The latest indictment notes the imported guards had little training on how to deal with prisoners.