Guards at Ind. jail stabbed in escape attempt

VERNON, Ind. — Three teenage inmates in a southern Indiana jail attacked three guards and briefly held them hostage early Tuesday during an escape attempt that left one guard hospitalized with a stab wound to the head, authorities said.

The inmates at the Jennings County Jail managed to stab the guards — one of them four times — around 12:30 a.m. before police officers shocked the inmates with stun guns and took them into custody, according to the Jennings County Sheriff’s Department.

Deputy Jerry Shepherd told The Republic of Columbus that the inmates used sharpened clothes hangers in the attack. Guards Vickie Day and Shawn McDaniels were treated and released at a local hospital, the newspaper reported, while guard Walter Peace was in stable condition after being flown to an Indianapolis hospital with a stab wound to the head.

A message left for Shepherd by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.

The escape attempt began when the inmates managed to take one officer hostage and then attacked two other guards in the area.

The inmates sprayed the guards with pepper spray they got from a storage cabinet, authorities said. They took the guards hostage during a struggle and moved into a hallway but were stopped from going any further when they reached locked hallway doors. Officers from the Sheriff’s Department, the North Vernon Police Department and the Indiana State Police then confronted the inmates, used their stun guns on them and freed the guards.

Two of the inmates, 17-year-old Ryan T. Renfroe and 19-year-old Roger Lee Bushhorn, face preliminary charges of kidnapping, criminal confinement, attempted escape with a deadly weapon and attempted escape with serious bodily injury. The third, 17-year-old James A. Smith, faces similar charges along with a felony charge of attempted murder, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

Renfroe, of Columbus, had been jailed on murder charges in the shooting deaths last month of a couple in their 60s. Smith was jailed on charges of robbery, aiding in a robbery and criminal confinement after allegedly robbing his grandmother. Bushhorn did not have prior charges pending in Jennings County, the office said, but was being held at the jail for charges pending in another county. Authorities did not immediately have details of those charges.

All three inmates were being held in other facilities while police investigate the escape attempt.